The Babushka Vibe

Matreshka - Friedrichshain

I must have been about five or six when I made an unfathomable discovery. It was a hot summer day at my grandmother’s and I had just eaten a revoltingly radioactive-looking banana ice-cream bar. My hands were sticky, my face smeared with yellow substance and I was holding a stick I needed to get rid of as soon as possible. As I stepped into the kitchen and pulled open the lid on top of the rubbish bin, a deeply disturbing scene unfolded in front of my impressionable eyes: the bin was full of dumplings that looked just like pierogi.

The gravity of the matter would surely be obvious to anyone who has ever come across a Polish grandmother. I will spell it out for all the others: pierogi, or Polish dumplings, are nothing less than sacred. Not only is it unthinkable to throw them away, it is a sin to even contemplate any such nonsense. Needless to say, I was baffled. Had an unspeakably hideous crime just taken place in the very kitchen I was standing in? I looked around, hoping it was not a trick to get me framed for pierogi-murder, and as I realised the kitchen was empty, I began screaming and ran to the other room, where my grandmother was leaning over a newspaper with a cigarette in her hand.

“Who threw away those pierogi?!” I cried. I must have gesticulated convulsively to stress my state of distress.
“Pierogi? What are you talking about?” She asked and seemed nearly panic-stricken for just one moment before realising what I had seen. Her nerves brought under control once again, she curved her lips into a sheepish smile. “Those weren’t pierogi. Just Vareniky. Ludmila, that Ruski from the second floor, she made them. She had the nerves to bring them here into my kitchen. I tasted one of them and threw them into the bin. Tasteless – like the rest of their food.” She then coughed as if to show I should pay special attention to what she was about to say next. “Russian food is like the evil witch from Snow White: she just looked pretty, but was foul inside. By the same token, people like Ludmila from the second floor just make their food look like good Polish food, but inside, it is just tasteless.”

I therefore spent my childhood years knowing that Russian food was something I better avoid. It was only years later, long after my grandmother’s death, that I discovered that Russian food could be quite brilliant. What she said was not entirely untrue: more often than not, Russian dishes will be blander than their Polish equivalences. Vareniky are not as rich as pierogi, borsht is not as flavoursome as a barszcz ukrainski and generally speaking, there seems to be less spice used in the Russian cuisine compared to the Polish one. But do we really need to relegate pointless national aversions and comparisons to the culinary world? As this blog tries to promote world peace and eternal love, I will stop perpetuating negative culinary stereotypes and concentrate on all that is good and kind. In this case, it won’t even prove too difficult, as the Russian cuisine truly has a great deal to offer: think of a juicy shashlik (the Russian version of shish kebab, meat galore on a skewer), a hot salyanka (a thick and sourish soup) or just a bowl of pelmeni (meat dumplings) covered with heaps of smetana (sour cream)? I know it doesn’t sound healthy. But you’ll have to admit it sounds good. And this was exactly what I had in mind when I found myself craving Russian food last week.

Following a friend’s advice, we went to try out Matreshka in Friedrichshain. We found ourselves in the midst of a Russian birthday party, with a group of mothers dancing with their five year old girls to Russian Eurovision music. The walls were covered with colourful prints of large babushka dolls, but were otherwise so white and the place so brightly lit that I could not help but thinking of a Russian community centre in Dudley. The cheap IKEA furniture did not make things any better, and looking around, the feeling was of a place cheap and not entirely welcoming. And yet, for some reason it felt just right. It reminded me of Russia.

Beef Stroganoff

Goulash

 The menu confirmed my first notion, with a choice of very simple, home made Russian food for fairly low prices. We ordered two pints of affordable Russian beer (Baltyka, 2.90 €) and started our meal by ordering soups: a soljanka (a sour soup with tomatoes, gherkins and different types of meat) and a bortsch (beetroot soup), both cost 3.90 € if ordered as a main course or 1.90 € if ordered as a starter. The soljanka was nice, but quite bland. The bortsch was very good. It was not spectacular, but it reminded me of homemade soups in Russia. We then continued with a pork-goulash (don’t expect to get Hungarian or German goulash. Here it is made of pieces of pork in tomato-like sauce, 4.90 €) and the most expensive main course on the menu, the beef stroganoff (slices of beef in mushroom-smetana sauce, 7.90 €). There was very little meat involved in the dishes and they were not what you'd call visually appetising, but it was not very surprising considering the price, and therefore not the end of the world. The sauces were tasty and the overall quality was quite pleasing though – it was neither refined nor spectacular, but it was nice and felt like homemade creations of Ludmila from the second floor, or any other babushka for that matter.

To accompany our meal we also ordered a dish of mixed dumplings with 9 pelmeni and 7 vareniky (pelmeni are the meat-filled dumplings, vareniky are vegetarian, filled with potatoes or potatoes and sauerkraut, 9.90 €). Even though our bellies later came close to the brink of explosion because of the amount of dumplings and smetana we had stuffed into our poor mouths, it was well worth it. The dumplings were just brilliant: the dough was just right, the fillings were pleasing despite being bland and the smetana definitely provided us with much needed fat for the cold winter.

Overall, Matreshka is far from being a refined five-star restaurant. And yet, something about it was just right: it was a cheap place for those who get a sudden urge to get catapulted eastwards. The food is far from being perfect, but it is pleasingly and affordably authentic. Even the babushkas on the wall and the ghastly music in the background were much appreciated as a part of the drill.

Overall mark:

Matreshka 

Boxhagener Straße 60, 10245 Berlin


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Food with a Moustache

Mimino - Georgisches Restaurant

Georgia (the country, not the state) has been an inseparable part of my world of references as far as I can remember. Even before I knew “Georgia” was a place, I knew “Georgian” was a perfectly acceptable adjective my Polish grandmother used in order to conjure the image of short, hairy and unhygienic men with thick, black and no less unhygienic moustaches. She could also use the word “Georgian” to describe my aunt’s obsessively tasteless collection of too colourful porcelain dolls. Sometimes she would say she’d just been to a “Georgian” restaurant, but by that she usually meant she had just been to a hole-in-the-wall that served greasy food and whose owner was a useless bum. Georgian food was something I only discovered later.

I cannot recall the first time I had Georgian food. I know I liked it and I know I could not help thinking of fat men reeking of cheap perfume and sweat. What I can clearly remember was the last time I went to a Georgian restaurant: it was a popular restaurant in Tallinn, hidden somewhere around the higher floors of a seedy Communist block. Inside it was decorated with the best overdose gold, red and bad taste paraphernalia could account for. Everyone seemed to be holding cigarettes in their hands and most men’s faces were hidden behind large moustaches. The icing on the cake was a short and husky woman with a microphone on an improvised stage in the centre of the room, titillating her bosom, singing the same Russian song in loops: ochen krasivaya zhenshina, a very beautiful woman. Oh, and yes, the food was delicious. Georgian food is just splendid: it is this fantastic fusion of Russian, Turkish and Persian food. It can be rich and tasty, both comfortably well-known and exotically intriguing.

When I was asked whether I wanted to go and try out Mimino in Charlottenburg, it did not take long for me to cancel other plans I may have had and storm out of my flat in the direction of the U7 towards the Old West. The place’s name is based on a classical Russian film about two (moustached) Georgian men, whose comic-like figures decorate the menu and the windows. Apparently, it’s a must-see comedy in the world of Russian film making. The restaurant itself is also a strange mixture of bad taste and attempted poshness. The walls are off-white and the tables are all set to raise expectations. However, TV screens are strewn around the place, showing mute football. As much as I was disappointed the place did not remind me of that Georgian place in Tallinn, all hope was not yet lost: the obligatory stage, microphone and playback cassette-recorder were all set in place and a small man was howling something that was supposed to be Frank Sinatra.

The menu was promising. It had a pleasing choice of fairly affordable Georgian dishes. As a starter (and I should probably state they were also listed as such), we ordered Chinkali (dumplings, the Georgian version of Russian pelmeni and Polish pierogi. The menu suggested them in three versions: with meat, potatoes and cheese. They were only available in the meaty and cheesy versions. We tried both, with cheese for the unit price of 0.90 € and meat for 0.80 € min. 5 units). For the main round, we ordered an array of things: Ostri (veal in spicy bell-pepper sauce, 9.50 €), Tschachochbili (chicken in tomato-coriander sauce, 8.50 €) and two chatschapourris (a sort of dough with cheese filling and topping, once with double cheese and one with garlic, 9.00 € and 10.00 €). As the main courses all come without sides, we ordered two more dishes of potatoes (3.00 €).

Ostri

It was then the chaos started. It seems like the division between “starters” and “main courses” was but a mere recommendation, as the first two dishes that appeared on the table were the first chatschapourri and the ostri. The ostri was not that spicy, but it was absolutely delicious. The meat was tender and the sauce was spectacularly good. The huge pot came without the potatoes or any other sides, and it took us a while before we realised we had to eat it before the other things came, or else it would get cold. The same goes for the chatschapourri. It was good, but a bit too monotonous and heavy: it was just dough with cheese, and lots of it. I’m the last one to say anything against dough and cheese, but it felt like eating a pizza-shaped brick. With those two dishes on the table, a waitress came out with a tray of butter cakes and asked us how many we wanted to reserve for the dessert, as “they are delicious and there might not be enough left once you get to the end”. We frowned, but could not take the pressure and reserved three.

Chatschapourri

Chinkali

Slowly but surely came out the other courses. The second chatschapourri seemed like an even heavier brick, but tschachochbili compensated for that by being delicious, yet still lacking its side dish. All the portions were very big, so that we were all more than satiated after the four main courses without the sides or the starters. This did not matter much for the waiters, as suddenly the chinkali decided to arrive. They were huge. Perversely so. The ones with the meat were utterly tasteless. The ones with the cheese (served with double cream and prune confiture) were fairly good quality, but so heavy they were difficult stuff down our throats. Just as the last bit had gone down, the waitress came out with our sides of potatoes. We managed to explain it was a bit too late for that, and after a bit more squabbling we even managed to cancel our pre-ordered dessert, as the last thing we were able to handle by that time was a butter cake with cream on top.

At the end of the day, it was quite an experience. The restaurant was chaotic and the service was miserable and pushy even for Berlin standards. But then again, it just made things strangely authentic. The food balanced between absolutely delicious (the meat dishes), good quality but too in-your-face heavy (the cheese dishes) and rather tasteless (the meat chinkali). A meal based on meaty main courses ONLY would probably be quite a success.

Overall mark:

Mimino - Georgisches Restaurant

Waitzstraße 1, 10629 Berlin

www.mimino-berlin.com 

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