Haunted Addresses: Vietnamese à la Central Europe

Chez Dang - Kreuzkölln

Returning to Berlin after a long holiday always involves a moment of reconciliation with the local greyness. Even after all these years, I still find the vast empty spaces, the dimly lit streets and the general scruffiness surprisingly daunting, if only for a short moment. Then there is the second post-holiday impression I have to cope with. It usually relates to a new venue that as a sign of sheer rudeness decided to open its doors in my short absence. There is always some element of visible change inherent to the city, even with holidays that do not exceed three weeks.

It’s not like you haven’t heard it all before. Berlin is all about change and many areas have transformed senselessly, entirely reinventing themselves in the last few decades, with Neukölln being the latest of a long list. We all know the main stories – Prenzlauer Berg transformed from a run-down-post-socialist-ruin into yummy-mummy-paradise or Kreuzkölln exchanging its old rugged Berliners for international wannabe hipsters. Yet these are made of a fair number of smaller stories. Some of them are clear success stories of venues establishing themselves as clear institutions. Some just get by. Whereas a tiny few just seem to be cursed.

I don’t know whether Friedelstr. 31 is an example for such unlucky address, but truth be told – it has already seen three different venues come and go in the last few years. True, the first restaurant was a success story, it was the pan-Mediterranean Kantina von Hugo, which after a few years decided to expand and move to a better address in Kreuzberg just on the other side of the canal. It was then replaced by Hellgrewe, which was ludicrously expensive for local standards and failed to establish itself as Neukölln’s new rising posh star. In fact, it did not as much as survive a year on the ground before it had to fade away to restaurant heaven and make way for Chez Dang.

And so we decided it was about time to pay our tribute to Neukölln’s latest newbie. Chez Dang would be the second Vietnamese restaurant on the street (with the relatively canonised institution Jimmy Woo being the usual alternative at no. 24), so it needed to find an identity of its own. Strangely enough, even though three inherently different restaurants have occupied the same spaces, the general atmosphere has not changed much since the Kantina’s first heyday: The restaurant is composed of a single, large and white space with dark wooden tables, agreeably dim lights and a mildly posh (and mildly sterile) feeling to it. The space has an inevitable Central-European vibe to it, which is not what you’d expect of a Vietnamese restaurant. Chez Dang seems to embrace and own that feeling, which is always a nice thing. I can only approve of any place that makes an effort to confront old clichés.

Chez Dang’s menu goes along the same line. Even though the dishes are clearly of the classically Vietnamese variety, the menu’s structure felt “Westernised”, if not plainly Germanised: A selection of random starters followed by a random selection of fairly balanced main courses, albeit with an endearing twist, allowing dishes with names like “pig fought tiger and lost” to take the centre stage. The pricing was very humane with most main courses around 6.50 € and the service earned rare points for professionalism and niceness.

Tempura Temptations

Lucky Bags

Which brings us to the actual food. We started with the “lucky bags” (fried wan tans with chicken filling, 4.50 €), “tempura temptations” (vegetable tempura, 5.50 €, also available in the shrimpy version for 6.50 €) and the “coconut thrill” (coconut-milk based soup with chunks of chicken for 3.60 €). The bags were mainly fried. They weren’t “bad”, but were too bland to be “good” either. The vegetarian tempura was a bit more amusing with different kinds of vegetables from aubergines to broccoli involved in the endeavour, but hey, it wasn’t too exciting either. Both fried dishes came with a sweet-and-sour-sauce that appeared directly out of my 80’s childhood. The soup, however, was a lot more pleasing. It was no revelation, but it delivered fairly well on the taste front: it was nicely spicy, thick without being ridiculously coconuty and its pricing was fairly perfect.

Pho

Bamboo Me Baby

The main courses continued along the same lines. We ordered the pho (the one true Vietnamese must-have, which is just clear broth with stuff in it, it was available with different sorts of meat, but the waitress recommended the beef, so beef it was. 6.70 €) and two more dishes from the self proclaimed “evergreen” section: the “dark side story” (vegetables and beans with chicken in thick soy sauce, served with rice for 8.50 €) and “bamboo me baby” with beef (sautéed bamboo with chilli, garlic and stuff for 8.30 €). Both evergreens proved to be nice and average. The names promised a lot more than the actual dishes delivered. They were pleasingly large, yet lacking on the inspiration front. Don’t get me wrong: there was nothing foul about them. They were not bad. They were probably an alright quality for the money and they tasted, like, nice. A bit like what Chinese restaurants in the 80’s in Britain felt like – nice. The pho was also nice, but on an entirely different level. It was actually savoury, amusingly thick and strangely familiar. But wait a minute, familiar? Oh yes, wait a minute, it felt like facing my Polish grandmother’s chicken broth. It had this Central European gratifyingly stodgy je-ne-sais-quoi. Which is nice. And healthy. But not necessarily appropriate. A pho is actually a fairly refined soup. The broth should not be heavy and should allow a light mixture of different flavours to toy with one’s sense of taste. So again, nice, but this was one niceness gone too far.

At the end of the day, Chez Dang is not bad. The ambiance is accommodating, the service is excellent and the pricing is perfect. And the food? It wasn’t bad. It was rather just… nice.

Overall Mark:

Chez Dang

Friedelstraße 31, 12047 Berlin
www.chez-dang.com


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The Best Burgers in Berlin?

Berliner-Spezial No. 2: A Burger Showdown

Better late than never, I welcome thee to the second Footprint-Berliner-Spezial, and this time it’s about burgers. Burgers, you may ask? Why burgers? The reason is partly because I can and partly because they have become an integral part of Berlin’s fast-food identity.

It all began a few years ago, I am not sure exactly why, but it (rather conveniently) happened just around the time How I Met Your Mother had aired its classic burger episode. To those of you who do not know How I Met Your Mother: I’ll just have to shake my head in disbelief and say I’ve expected more of you. HIMYM is an American sitcom about five friends living and struggling through the Big Apple. As much as a great deal of the series is about the American obsession with dating as a way of life (more on that some other time), other parts of it are just about what makes New York the Greatest City in the Universe (a HIMYM quote, not necessarily the Footprints’ opinion).

Back to the Burger Episode, twenty minutes in which our five main characters run around New York in search of the perfect hamburger. They race between holes in the wall, rant about how burgers used to be better in the past and groan an awful lot (apparently the natural reaction to a really good burger). After watching it, I felt like groaning as well, but at the time, the only hole-in-the-wall in Berlin dedicated to burgers was the Kreuzburger. You could still find good – albeit pricier – burgers in real restaurants, but the very idea of running around in town looking for the best piece of meat in a bun seemed unattainably absurd.

Which is, needless to say, not the case anymore. Holes-in-the-walls dedicated to serving greasy burgers for humane prices have been popping up in Berlin like mushrooms after an autumn shower. If Berlin had its own proper HIMYM (Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, anyone?*), one could think of shooting a classic burger episode even here.

But until that happens, you will have to be satisfied with Footprints in Berlin rising to the challenge of providing you with a basic guide to burger-holes-in-the-wall in Berlin. Over the last week, I have tried out seven burger institutions all around the city (with the main criterion being price/accessibility – these are NOT restaurants, but burger stands, the Low-Cost of burgers). They were then ranked according to the burger quality (I tried out the cheeseburger and the wedges in each hole-in-the-wall in order to have a fix parameter for comparison). The ONLY real criterion for the ranking was the burgers’ quality (and value). Other factors (like ambiance, service and variety) will be described, but I will try to keep their influence on the actual ranking to a minimum. Now enough chatter. Let’s get down to work: Where can you find the best burgers in Berlin?

Overall Rank: 7: Burgers Berlin, Friedrichshain

If this Berliner-Spezial gave any credit for ambiance, Burgers Berlin would definitely be a bit further ahead. The inside is quite nice (considering the fact it is just a hole-in-the-wall), with neon-aesthetics well combined with a wannabe-diner look. The burgers are alright. They’re the bog-standard variety with a rather small chunk of meat (which wasn’t that exceptional to begin with). It is not bad, but something about their burger just felt an awful lot like McDonald’s, which will – unfortunately – have to place them at the very bottom of the list.

Prices:
Regular Burger: 3.20 €
Cheeseburger: 3.40 €
Chips: 1.20 €
Wedges: 1.40 €

Why Ja? An actual diner-like place, onion rings.
Why Nein? Putting the bog in standard.

Burgers Berlin

Sonntagstraße 2, 10245 Berlin


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Overall Rank: 6: Burgermeister, Kreuzberg

This is not just me being contrary here, but it’s about time somebody said admitted that Burgermeister ain’t as good as everyone says it is. Sorry. True, the location is a stroke of genius: under the U-Bahn railings in a turn of the century-art-nouveau-look-alike public lavatories’ structure. It really is quite brilliant. Their number system is also a bit more customer friendly than anywhere else (they’ve actually got an electronic display, unlike other places where they just shout something into thin air). Maybe it’s the fact that you have to queue for too long a time and that it doesn’t take long to gather enough material of a hipster-bashing blog entry. Maybe it’s the fact that the buns we got could have been mistaken for charcoals and that the meat was fairly dry, but I just can’t really see why people go on raving about the place. And yet, if you make it through the queue: the sauces are good, the wedges are excellent and it’s the only place in town where you can get a Teutonic version of chips-and-cheese!

Prices:
Regular Burger: 3.40 €
Cheeseburger: 3.70 €
Chips: 1.50 €
Wedges: 1.60 €
(Cheese-fries: 1.90 €)


Why Ja? Perfect location, good number system, their bacon-cheese-fries (that grease galore is worth every pound you gain in weight), good selection of burgers.
Why Nein? Horrible service, long queues, dry meat, burnt buns.

Burgermeister

Oberbaumstraße 8, 10997 Berlin
www.burger-meister.de


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Overall Rank: 5: Hamburger Heaven, Kreuzberg

True to its location, the burger-stand on Graefestr. is all about friendliness and organic-vibes. Everything is clean and nice, not to mention this being the only place where they offer two degrees of organic meat: “Freiland” and “Bio”, with the difference being that the Bio-animals had been fed organically themselves, whereas the Freiland-cows might have roamed freely through the green meadows of Northern Germany, but their nutrition was based on Lidl produce. Be it as it may, take the “Bio” burger if you come around, the difference is fairly rewarding. The less rewarding elements are the waiting time (there was no real queue and we still managed to wait for nearly 40 minutes out in the cold), the buns (they don’t fall apart, but they’re not tasty either) and the home-made sauces. As the place is all about being organic, they make their own ketchup, BBQ-sauce and the rest. It might sound good (and to be fair, it also tastes good inside the burger), but I’ve rarely been so frustrated as while trying to get some of their thick and sour tomato-spread (AKA home-made ketchup) on top of my chips (home-made as well, yet very good).

Prices: (add 0.50 € for Freiland and 1.00 € for Bio)
Regular Burger: 3.50 €
Cheeseburger: 4.00 €
Chips: 2.00/3.00 €


Why Ja? Very rich burgers, good quality meat, real cheese in the cheeseburger, good chips, nice service, the place also serves steaks for those who could not be bothered taking a burger.
Why Nein? No seating arrangements inside in case it gets either cold or rainy (as in 90% of the time), long wait, home made sauces, an overriding impression of trying too hard to be healthy.

Hamburger Heaven

Graefestraße 93, 10967 Berlin
www.hamburgerheaven.org


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Overall Rank: 4: Kreuzburger, Kreuzberg.

Tradition has to be rewarded in some way. The original Kreuzburger on Oranienstraße can be crowned as Berlin’s original burger-hole-in-the-wall. The space inside is much bigger than in most other places and is therefore also more suitable for winter escapades. Just keep in mind it’s fairly gritty – and not always the nice way. The burger variety is quite impressive, assuring that just about anyone will be able to find something. Their burgers are fairly standard, but the good way: the meat is good (their organic meat is even better), the sauces are just fine and their selection of chips is great. Just keep in mind that their “home fries” are fairly massive pieces of potatoes, whereas what you mean when you order “wedges” anywhere else would have to be their “country fries”.

Prices:

Regular Burger: 2.70 € (3.90 € for large/ 3.40 € for organic)
Cheeseburger: 3.10 € (4.40 € for large/ 3.90 € for organic)
Chips: 1.60 €
Wedges: 2.50 €

Why Ja? Good quality; standard burgers; large variety of burgers; good chips that come in more than one shape.
Why Nein? Not the nicest atmosphere.

Kreuzburger (Kreuzberg)
Oranienstraße 190, 10999 Berlin
www.kreuzburger.de


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Overall Rank: 3: Burgerium, Friedrichshain

Surprisingly enough, not one of Berlin’s well known burger institutions, but the hole-in-the-wall on Revaler Straße that seems to be there purely for the sake of large groups of drunken tourists on a stag-night tour of Berlin (i.e. who would be satisfied by just about anything, as long as it’s greasy enough) managed to get to the top three. Don’t let the place’s appearance blind you to their burgers: We’re talking about large, juicy burgers with tasty sauces and great chips.

Prices:

Regular Burger: 2.90 €
Cheeseburger: 3.30 €
Chips: 1.80 €
Wedges: 2.00 €

Why Ja? Good burgers.
Why Nein? There would be a fair chance to find oneself in the fire range of someone’s vomit in case you decided to sit outside.

Burgerium

Revaler Straße 8, 10245 Berlin


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Overall Rank: 2: Marienburger, Prenzlauer Berg 

If I handed hamburger-footprints for service, Marienburger would win by a large margin. The ladies at the till were inherently nice in a way you rarely see in Berlin’s holes-in-the-wall. As it is the only good burger institution in Prenzlauer Berg, expect a long queue due to parents and children negotiating matters of high importance at the till, usually followed by the same parents trying to calm down these same children once they start crying after the first “no”. The space inside is minimal. In summer, hope to get a seat outside, seeing how the street is actually quite pleasant and all. And the most important bit? Yes, the burgers. They’re great. Really. The standard burgers are already massive and the meat is good quality. The topping is otherwise quite minimal (with the buns, gherkins, onions and the usual sauces), but it still managed to be just right. The only problem was that I found the cheese to be quite horrid (they use the worst kind of American melted “cheddar”), but I know some people who actually enjoy an injection of radioactive chemicals into their burger and find cheeseburgers should be served without any real cheese. And yet, try out their Marienburger (double cheeseburger with slices of bacon), it’s a chunk of pure, greasy joy for the mere price of 5 EUR.

Prices:

Regular: 3.50 €
Cheeseburger: 3.80 €
(Marienburger – double + cheese + bacon: 5.00 €)
Chips: 1.40 €
Wedges: 1.50 €

Why Ja? Great burgers; good meat; nice service; the Marienburger.
Why Nein? Long wait; horrid cheese.

Marienburger Imbiss

Marienburger Straße 47, 10405 Berlin
www.marienburger-berlin.de


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Overall Rank: 1: BBI – Berlinburger International, Neukölln

The best burger joint in Berlin is actually a den. Or a pigsty, you choose. I reckon it’s appropriate, as we are talking about Newkölln and most people around would not be caught dead in anything less cool (or without the obligatory swanky moustaches and thick-rimmed glasses). The interior space is tiny and stuffy and the tables outside are just... well... not the nicest place on earth. However, go there. It’s worth every cent. The regular burgers are already massive (even though you can also order the “Nimmersatt” version for an additional 2.80 € and probably stuff your face with enough meat to keep your stomach busy for a week) and not always easy to get into a normal person’s mouth (mine is larger than most, so I am usually spared the need to cut things into smaller slices). But the main point is that the meat is great and the topping together with that lamb’s-lettuce is quite amusing. Even if you’re not the type who likes dens in Neukölln, you should try their burgers.

Prices:

Regular: 3.90 €
Cheeseburger: 4.40 €
Chips: 2.00 €
Wedges: 2.00 €

Why Ja? Great burgers, period.
Why Nein? Not the best space ever; their chilli-cheese-fries are quite strange (a layer of chips, covered with a slice of cheese, covered with nice, yet bland chilli con carne).

BBI - Berlinburger International

Pannierstraße 5, 12047 Berlin
www.berlinburgerinternational.com


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Ace of Base Go Tapas

Manuela - Neukölln

Do you remember the 90’s? I must say I rather liked the time. Everything was so nice and fuzzy back then. From the fall of Communism through the fall of the Tories all to the Peace Process in the Middle East, the world that surrounded me seemed to be under an unbreakable spell of optimism. It is hard not to miss a decade that produced wonders on the calibre of Belle & Sebastian, Fiona Apple and the grand Ace of Base... Oh, Eurotrash.

But the unmaking of the 90’s was sown with the very seed of their success. For those who looked hard enough (or for those – like myself – who take a moment and look back at their adolescent years with the intellectual tools acquired during hours of discussing Foucault, handbags and more Foucault on the benches of any faculty for cultural studies/history of art), signs predicting the downfall of capitalistic optimism were all around: Britney Spears, New Labour, tapas.



Tapas, you may ask? Well yes, tapas. Those jovially Spanish selections of small dishes. Take a hard look back at the end of the 90’s. What is it you’ll see, flickering there in front of your eyes at every street corner? Tapa bars, tapa meals, tapa everything. The fashion suddenly was about minimising dishes for maximising profits. Getting people to feel all Spanish by paying a fortune for potatoes in aioli. But let’s cut the political ball breaking crap for a second. This is a restaurant blog and not a stage for me to rant about the woes of modern capitalism.

Yet the fact remains that I find it hard to take tapas seriously just because I cannot help thinking about them as a relic, a culinary fad from the 90’s. Every time I see a tapas bar, my brain gets me back to Bill Clinton saying “I did not have relations with that woman” with Ace of Base singing The Sign in the background. But tapas can be brilliant. At the end of the day, the problem is not tapas, it’s me. So trying to exorcise my tapa-demons, I decided to go to Manuela, a modern looking Spanish restaurant-café on Friedelstraße, Kreuzkölln’s culinary heart.

We sat outside on a balmy summer’s evening and were therefore unable to comment the music (even though I couldn’t blame them even if they did play Ace of Base. The Sign is one ace piece of music). Yet from the frequent walks to the toilet and to the bar, I can say the (surprisingly large) interior space is nicely done, walking on that line between a restaurant and a café with colours and furniture cosy enough to sit on, but comfortable enough to eat in. The service was friendly and the Spanish barwoman (who was also responsible for the tapas) had the ubiquitous Spanish mullet.

I ordered a glass of the red house wine (3.50€, bitterly heavy) and turned to look at the menu. It offered a fair choice of Spanish food, starting with tapas, moving to soups, Catalan meat dishes and sharing-classics along the paella lines. The menu’s size was just right, with enough choice for it to be interesting, yet not so much to make it less trustworthy.

Tapas

Lomo Adobado

The tapas are neatly priced at 2.60 € a unit, 5 units for 12 € and 7 units for 16 €. We were greedy and thus ordered the seven deal. We chose the chorizo, a courgette tortilla, salchichia, mushrooms with bacon, Catalan spinach, Catalan chick peas and meat balls. They were served promptly on a tray that was aesthetically pleasing and seemed fairly promising. The quality did not oscillate much between the dishes, all being fairly nice, but not downright inspiring. The meat balls were the best choice with a sweet tinge and a curiously appealing overall taste. The chorizo and the salchichia were both alright, with OK sausage quality and nice presentation. The chick peas and the spinach were both fairly good, served with a pleasing mix of vegetables. The champignons were well executed (no fuss involved) and last, but not least, the tortilla was very good: it was light (for a tortilla) and flavoursome.

Manuela Teller

Crema Catalana

We then continued to Manuela’s “Catalan Classics” and ordered the lomo adobado (pork loin, served with tomato jam, apple-cabbage salad and cerdanya – a version of rough mash with Savoy cabbage and ham, 8.90 €) and the Manuela plate (lomo adobado and smoked pork chop served with date and bacon skewers, apple-raisin compote, potatoes and red cabbage in red wine, 9.50 €). Both dishes were fairly similar: simple meat you don’t mind, but that you wouldn’t otherwise consider inspiring, served with intriguing, well presented and high quality sides. The ceradya with the tomato jam in the one dish and the date/bacon skewers with the apple raison compote in the other actually managed to turn dishes based on fairly boring slices of pork into a pleasing experience. We ended the meal with a crema catalana (the Spanish equivalent of a crème brulée, 3.70 €), which was large and well presented with the perfect balance between vanilla and that lemony tang, but alas, too watery.

Overall, Manuela was fun. It was a thoroughly decent experience, with well executed (and well priced) simple food with ups and downs. Some of the dishes had an edge to them that was both pleasing and promising. It would be nice if Manuela followed that edge and developed it into something even more satisfying, but even at the moment (and with the current prices, ambiance and service), it’s worth a visit.

Overall Mark: 

Manuela - Tapas

Friedelstraße 34, 12047 Berlin
www.manuelatapas.com


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Putting Turkey on Berlin's Map

Gözleme - Neukölln

Imagine the following conversation taking place in German:
Me: „Let’s go for food.“
Some blond person: „Sure, any suggestions?”
Me: “There’s this nifty Turkish place down the road…”
That blond person: “I thought you meant real food? I’m not in he mood of having Döner right now.”
Me again: “Urgh… I didn’t mean that either. I was talking about going to a restaurant.”
A bewildered blond person: “Yeah, but a Döner on a plate is still just a Döner, right? I think I’ll pass. I need real food.”
An irritated me: “But… like… a restaurant? With real food? Cooked and all? What’s not real about that?”
An irritated blond person: “Listen, let’s just do something else, I told you I didn’t feel like going for a kebab.”

That dialogue of the deaf can go on pretty much the same way for a couple more minutes before I end the discussion with a sigh and lead the way to the warm embrace of the closest Schnitzel. Not that Schnitzel is bad. I love Schnitzel. But I’ve always found Teutonic disinterest regarding Turkish food to be quite baffling.

As true as it may be that food can be overrated as a sign of entrenchment of genuine multicultural understanding in any society, it’s still bleeding important on an everyday level. In some ways, it’s always the first contact between people, an excuse to start talking to each other and a symptom of people’s readiness to test their own limits and boundaries. Which is why I find it so strange that the Turkish cuisine – although so present in Germany – has not yet been embraced by most Germans to be included into the local food culture, as is the case in France with couscous and in Britain with curry.

The thing about the Turkish cuisine is that it is strikingly rich, encompassing a whole myriad of dishes, shapes and tastes. Yet ask any of the inhabitants of the largest Turkish city outside of Turkey whether they know any Turkish food and most will not get anywhere past Döner. And let’s face it, Döner isn’t even that Turkish, being a local creation invented around Kottbusser Tor. And still, Berlin offers a range of many good Turkish places. The trick is to find them.

Gözleme in Neukölln was initially a friend’s tip. One of the few traces left by an unspectacularly boring relationship with a Turkish ex was a love of Turkish pastries and dough-based dishes. Two of them are Gözleme – the Turkish version of a crêpe – and Manti – the Turkish dumplings. She said we could find both on Karl Marx Straße.

At first glance, the place is barely distinguishable from any Döner joint in town, just a bit larger. This impression is heavily influenced by the fact that the décor is a marriage made in hell between radioactively yellow walls, in-your-face lights and a touch of pink whenever possible. But there is a real menu, the spinning kebab is nowhere to be found and the owner of the place is incredibly nice and welcoming.

The menu is not overwhelmingly large. It offers a fairly limited choice of soups, a never-ending list of gözleme, two different manti and a couple of meat dishes from the grill. We decided to concentrate on the doughy options and started by ordering a lentil soup (2.80 €) and an aubergine gözleme (that Turkish crêpe for 2.50 €) to start the meal. One has to remember that the lentils in Turkish lentil soups are pureed, giving the soup a very smooth texture. Unfortunately, this one came out fairly bland at the end. It was still alright, but just not inspiring. The gözleme was far better: The dough was thin and the garlicky aubergine filling was superb. It was also large enough to serve as a main.

Lentil soup

 We then continued to our main courses and ordered manti for each, but one dish was vegetarian (with potatoes, 5.50 €) and the other had a meat filling (for 6.50 €). Manti are basically dumplings the size of a dice. Their size is probably one of the biggest challenges when it comes to their preparation, as it is very easy to either stuff them with too little filling and just taste dough or to stuff them with too much and to miss the point. They are served swimming in a yoghurt-garlic sauce. The meat manti were just perfect. The dough was good and the filling had a strong presence despite its miniscule size. The yoghurt-garlic-pepper sauce was so good I did not mind leaving the place smelling like a vampire slayer. The vegetarian manti were, unfortunately, a bit of a disappointment. The sauce was just as good, but the dumplings were fairly watery and the filling did not taste of much. It was still alright, but it felt like eating slices of dough swimming in yoghurt-garlic sauce, which is not as spectacularly good as eating delicious manti.

Gözleme

Manti

 I’m being fair here and rewarding gözleme with three prints because the bland soup and the watery vegetarian manti were far from perfect, but it doesn’t mean the place isn’t good. It is quite marvellous if you know what to order and feel like having a simple, hearty and inexpensive meal. Otherwise, in case you live and Berlin and have never tasted gözleme or manti, just go there without thinking twice (and when I say gözleme, I do NOT mean those greasy atrocities they sell at the Maybachufer market).

Overall mark:

 

Gözleme - Türkisches Restaurant

Karl-Marx-Str. 35, 12043 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 613 4134


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Berliner Spezial no. 1: The Best Bagel in Kreuzberg?

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Which Bagel is the most Brilliant of All? 

I greet thee to the first ever Berliner Spezial. And this time – bagels. I can already see those wrinkles on your foreheads, your curved eyebrows and that questioning look: why bagels? Aren’t Berliner-Spezials supposed to be about something representative of Berlin? What happened to Currywurst? Eisbein? Döner? Worry not! They will all receive their due place in the footprint annals of history. However, it somehow felt right to start with bagels. Let me explain...

It may be a fairly new thing, but bagels seem to have been adopted by Berliners. I believe it started with the Bagel Company. A few years ago it was still nearly impossible to get bagels in most places. Cafés in Berlin were mostly about coffee, cake and breakfast, with the odd sandwich out every now and again. And then, just about the same time as the hipsters had invaded Neukölln and Berlin had become a European Tourist Mecca, a wave of bagels suddenly came upon us.

I like bagels. I also like that international flair they convey: at the end of the day they are the culinary outcome of what the academia would define as “trans-national border crossing”. Poor Jews had left their home countries and came over to seek a better future in the New World, just to turn bagels – as they eventually turned themselves – into an essential and innate symbol of the worldliest of world cities: New York. Bagels to New York are like the Big Ben to London. Any city wanting to stand in New York’s worldly limelight needs its own local bagel culture. And this is where Berlin enters the picture, with bagels becoming ever more present in the city’s café culture.

The last week was spent in the company of bagels from five different cafés in Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Those cafés were marked and ranked according to four criteria: Variety, bagel quality, quality of the filling and ambience (an inevitable factor, as we are talking about cafés. Nevertheless, I tried to avoid including the quality of coffee or cake into the picture. There will be other posts for that). Feel free to comment on the results:

Overall rank no. 5: Cuccuma, Zossener Str. 34, 10961 Berlin
www.cuccuma.de

Price: 2.50 €

Variety: 5th. A very small and unspectacular variety. Mostly lox, salami and Gouda. The bagels stand in the display case ready with the filling. Visual selection is easier than choosing from the menu, yet it still makes me think it’s less fresh and it gives me the creeps because I don’t know how many hands have already touched it.

Bagel quality: 2nd. Yes. The bagel itself is fantastic. Doughy, tasty and light. Highly good quality.

Filling quality: 4th. The filling itself is alright, even though it’s fairly unspectacular: it tastes fresh (even though the fact it’s been standing outside in the display case might awaken other instincts) and the quality is alright. It’s even healthy, with two slices of tomato and salad. Quite good, really.

Ambience: 5th and my real beef with the place. It is the most Starbucksy of the lot, trying to be a real iBook-café, but without the space needed for a comfortably professional atmosphere. As it is, it just reminds me of what I dislike about Manhattan: Not enough space, too quick and too plastic-fantastic. Americans in need of a less “European” vibe might appreciate it, I just thing it’s useless.

Lox bagel

Cuccuma

Final remark: Not a bad bagel, really. It’s a shame the variety and the ambience couldn’t be more convincing.


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Overall rank no. 4: Ringo, Sanderstraße 2, 12047 Berlin
Price: 3.50 €

Variety: 4th: You can choose between three types of filling and cross it with three types of bagels. I’m not impressed by gouda and ham fillings, but you can’t blame them for being basic.

Bagel quality: 5th: I’m sure it was a frozen bagel from Kaiser’s or even worse – Lidl? It was warm, which was nice, but it still tasted of what ready made bread from the freezer tastes like after a good toasting. It was fluffy without being good. I don’t mind fluff when it comes to English white bread, but bagels? No.

Filling: 5th: It was very generous and just right, really: the cream cheese, the lox, the rocket leaves, everything smudged together was basically right. But it wasn’t fresh. Not at all.

Ambience: 1st: Which brings me to why Ringo was such a bagel disappointment in the first place: It’s a really nice café! It’s one of those “wannabe Brooklyn cafés”, yet it is so much better than anything you’d ever find in Williamsburg. It’s got the space, the cake and the prices only Berlin can offer with a touch of inclusive “coolness”: even though it’s a hipster café, you won’t feel bad about yourself sitting there not being one.

Lox and cream cheese

Ringo

Final remark: Brilliant café, just don’t go there for the bagel!


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Overall rank no. 3: Goldmarie, Grimmstraße 29, 10967 Berlin
Price: 3.20 – 3.70 €

Variety: 3rd: A few more options on the menu than the former two. Officially, you can’t choose the bagels to go with the fillings, but you could if you asked the waitresses.

Bagel quality: 4th: What can I say? Not very good. Really, why do you offer bagels if you can’t find a good bakery to produce them? It was small and didn’t taste of much.

Filling: 3rd: Oh joy. It was great. Quality and quantity all combined. Heaps of vegetables and healthy stuff, carrot and cucumbers cut into small shapes and forms just to give you the impression of being king. Yay. The only problem was that it was difficult to discern one main taste to give the whole filling a bit more character. But still – go for it.

Ambience: 2nd: It’s a really nice café. Just by the canal, comfortable seats, pleasant service. An address to remember (and I am biased by their cake. I know, I said I wouldn’t mention it, but come on, like, rhubarb or gooseberry cake? How can anyone resist THAT?).

Lox and cream cheese

Goldmarie

Final remark: Nice café, good bagel presentation, with the filling compensating for the poor bagel quality. It gets even nicer in summer, though.


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Overall rank no. 2: Wilhelmine, Gneisenaustr. 67, 10961 Berlin
www.cafewilhelmine.de
Price: 2.80 – 4.00 €

Variety: 2nd: The menu didn’t have more options than Goldmarie’s, but they were a lot more exciting. Not only the usual sesame bagels with lox and cream cheese, but also a za’atar bagel (za’atar is a Lebanese/ Middle Eastern mixture of spices and herbs). Quoting Glee’s Kurt: Vive la difference!

Bagel quality: 2nd: Just about together with Cuccuma, really good bagels. The overall quality of the bagel might have been a bit inferior to Cuccuma’s, but then again, together with the za’atar it was quite fantastic. And anyhow: just right, doughy and joyous.

Filling quality: 2nd: The bagel came out with fewer slices of carrots and cucumbers to decorate the endeavour, but it was generous with the right things. It provided the bagel with a strong, distinct taste of what you had ordered. Very good quality.

Ambience: 4th: I really like Wilhelmine, but mainly because of the friendly service and the fact it’s so close to home. Otherwise, its design and choice of furniture, lights and atmosphere are far from perfect. It’s all very functional and comfortable, but can seem a bit sterile at times.

Za'atar, goat cheese, sun dried tomatos

Wilhelmine

Final remark: The perfect place to take your parents for a bagel. Cosy and suitable for dark wintry days, it’s a pleasant café with good quality bagels.


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Overall rank: 1: A’horn - Café und Fahrradladen, Carl-Herz-Ufer 9, 10961 Berlin
Price: 3.80 €

Variety: 1st: A list of eight types of homemade bagels to be selected with eight possible types of fillings. No traditional lox bagel, but then again, the world has more to offer than just smoked salmon.

Bagel quality: 1st: What can I say? Absolutely delicious. Perfect quality with the increased joy of choosing between things like olive or tomato bagels. They have the perfect texture and taste. I wouldn’t mind them being bigger though.

Filling: 1st: Again. Very good. Generous amount of high quality filling together with just enough vegetables and pesto to make it all taste as it should. And it even gave me the satisfaction of eating something healthy looking.

Ambience: 3rd: The A’horn is a new place, opened just on the corner of Baerwaldstraße and the canal, which used to be quite a dead and drab corner. Livening up the area is a blessed idea and the design is nice. It’s a perfect café if you want to get some work done: it’s quiet, spacious and you won’t get disturbed. One downside: I had to wait for a LONG time before getting served. Take it into account.

Olive bagel with goat cheese

A'horn

Final remark: Probably the best bagels I’ve had in Kreuzberg so far, all packed in a pleasant atmosphere. Go there for the bagel or if you’re around the block (because there aren’t any other real options to begin with), but if you are looking for the perfect café, there are better places on this list.


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And a few general remarks about bagels:

1. Size does matter. I couldn’t help thinking how much I missed those bulky bagels from America. You know? The ones you can’t just fit into your mouth. They might be over the top, but they reflect the true essence of bagels: being as large as they are, they’re all about the dough. I believe this is the reason even my Brooklynite family’s embarrassingly horrid taste in food was not able not ruin a bagel. Even though they managed to wham every possible culinary (kosher) atrocity on their table (which was, same as the rest of the furniture, covered by a plastic foil), turning dinner into the most painful experience I have ever endured, the bagels still remained an island of edibility: my own private survival cord through painful Shabbat dinners.

2. Bagels are not necessarily the “healthy American option”, which they seem to be hailed as around these parts. Big, chunky and fat bagels are not any worse than healthy ones. It also means the filling should be treated accordingly. I definitely enjoyed receiving bagels I could eat without worrying their grease would kill me within the next couple of hours, but I did wish I could choose options like “eggs and cheese”. Personally, I would be in favour of starting a petition to introduce bagels with scrambled eggs into the local variety. Who’s with me?

Gentrification and Food

Silberlöffel - Neukölln

One of the incredible contradictions inherent to Berlin is how mellow and low-key it can seem, when in fact it is in the process of going through extreme changes. Walking down Berlin’s quiet and slow paced streets, it is hard to imagine that they change their wardrobe a lot more often than the buzzing streets of Paris or to some extent even Manhattan. Just think of the pace in which most of Berlin’s central districts have ceaselessly been reinventing themselves in the last couple of decades following the fall of the wall. Yet nowhere has this change been as complete or rather as intense as in the northern end of Neukölln AKA Kreuzkölln.

Talking about Kreuzkölln is always quite an ordeal. It fills me with tears and makes me feel like an old spinster talking about the good old times that will never return. My recollections are always about a different, primal and naïve Berlin; the way it was when I had only just arrived with my oversized bags at the Zoologischer Garten on the night train. I love wallowing in memories of things long gone. However, there is still one disturbing fact attached to my endless Berlin-nostalgia; even though I may consider myself to be older than the hills, I’ve only been here for a mere six and a half years. And within such a short time, Kreuzkölln has managed to change beyond recognition. Hell, forget six and a half years, why won’t you make it three? Up to roughly three years ago, the very name Neukölln had been enough to scare off most decent folks. True, people had talked about the possibility of Neukölln becoming the next best thing, but frankly – nobody had taken any of it seriously.


And then it happened. It started out of nowhere and within mere months the area between the canal, Kottbusser Damm and Sonnenallee all the way to Pannierstraße suddenly metamorphosed into hipster paradise. By the time Zitty dedicated its cover story to Neukölln, it had already been clear that Kreuzkölln was the most up-and-coming area east of the Atlantic. Weserstraße had already been paved with bars and Friedelstraße had gained a reputation for being Kreuzkölln’s culinary heart. Did someone just say the word “cool”?

Yet I, I still remember what it used to be like before the invasion. But as hard as try to conjure up a positive picture of it, I just keep coming to the same unavoidable conclusion: despite the romantic edge attached to talking about places before the hipster takeover, the place was quite a dump. I just remember Friedelstraße as one of these generically plain, empty streets you could also find in Wilmersdorf or Steglitz.

The only two points of interest on Friedelstr. were the Mona-Lisa and Eckbert, both on the corner with the canal. The Mona-Lisa was a dodgy pizzeria, now replaced by another dodgy Indian restaurant. The Eckbert, however, was a real institution. It combined a splendid location inside a corner-building alongside the canal with good, hearty German food, a ghastly aquarium and the most obnoxious waiter Berlin has ever produced (which is – as almost everyone would agree – quite a thing to achieve, with waiters in Berlin constantly competing for that one). It was precious. And then it moved out in December 2009 and a few months later a new restaurant, Silberlöffel, opened its gates. The new owners changed the dodgy interior into something more upscale, with the smudgy pink walls painted white and the plain massive tables replaced by posher dark wooden furniture. Oh, and yes, that sordid aquarium is gone, too. The large and simple menu of the old Neuköllner institution was also replaced by a rather small variety of traditional German dishes with a changing daily menu. Now that the place has been around for nearly a year, I thought it was about time to check out that symbol of Neuköllner gentrification.

As we walked through the door, I saw my old Eckbert habits refused to die: my eyes were swerving into a frown and my muscles were ready to flex to fend off an obnoxious remark to be made by the waiter. Instead, we were greeted with a smile and a friendly “guten Abend”. We ordered a large Lübzer (3.50 €) and a glass of nice French Cabernet Sauvignon (3.40 €) and started examining the menu.

Appetizers

Schnitzel and Spätzle

Being in a carnivore mood, we opted for the very meaty options. However, it feels like I should at least mention that the menu is very accommodating for vegetarians, with roughly half the main courses and starters being completely without meat. We started by sharing the standard appetizer-plate (the one with meat on it, 7.40 €, also exists in a vegetarian version for a couple of cents less). It contained a variety of the usual German sausages, grilled salmon, antipasti-like vegetables and a vegetarian paste. All in all, it was good. The portion was pleasingly large and the quality of the produce was definitely good. The grilled vegetables were sometimes too grilled though. It was a nice dish, but not all too refined. The pleasant surprise came with the main courses. We ordered the Wiener Schnitzel (it usually comes with a potato salad and another cucumber salad, but as I despise both, I ordered Spätzle instead. All for 14 €) and a Hüftsteak (sirloin steak, with fried potatoes and a salad, and by far the most expensive thing on the menu 17.50 €). The schnitzel was absolutely perfect: a large portion, tasting of meat and not only the batter, whereas the meat was thinly sliced, as it should be. The batter was also extremely tasty and not too greasy. The spinach-green Spätzle I got on the side were also very good. The steak was pleasing as well: good quality meat, with medium being medium. Not too charred and not too bloody. It reminded me that eating real meat was actually great fun.

Steak

Coffee

We ended the meal with a crème brûlée (3.80€), which was very good despite the fact I thought it was a bit too lemony, and a splendid Kaiserschmarrn (5.50 €). The Kaiserschmarrn was one of the best I have had in Berlin so far – perfectly doughy and soft, and yet caramelised where it should be. It was spectacularly enjoyable.

And that brings us to the end of the meal: it was not perfect, but it was definitely worth more than four prints, which leaves us with five. To be fair, the less spectacular parts of the meal were also priced accordingly (the appetizers cost almost half of what one would pay elsewhere for a large antipasti plate and were not any worse for it). It will thus have to be remembered as a positive side of gentrification. And about that legendary Eckbert: it moved to Görlitzer Park to a new location called Eckbert Zwo, which will have to appear on this blog at some point in the near future.

Overall mark:

Silberlöffel

Maybachufer 21, 12047 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 629 000 43


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