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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Show Me Your Teeth? Tapas in Kreuzberg

Las Primas - Restaurant - Café -Bar

Let’s talk about teeth. Do you find them aesthetically pleasing? Mildly attractive? Sexually appealing? I remember meeting this girl at a house party in Paris aeons ago. She was petite and her hair stank of unrecognisable substances (or just weeks of unhygienic neglect. It was France at the end of the day). She told me she found teeth sexy and that mine were just perfect. I thought it was a dorky comment and it provided me with the excuse I so needed to get away from her and try to mingle with the beautiful people around. As the evening unfolded I found myself drinking seventeen glasses of cheap vodka and puking on a kitten. In retrospect, I probably should have continued talking about teeth.

But teeth. And sex. Doesn’t it ring a bell? Isn’t it what True Blood is all about? It depicts vampires as highly sexualised beings. Just like that girl’s hair reeked of not-taking-any-showers à la Française, they emanate sex. And they convey their sexuality through their fangs. I must admit that those fangs are quite perfect: they are perfectly white and symmetrical, appealing to every human’s sense of aesthetics. However, this is not the case with everyone’s set of teeth (or fangs, for that matter).

When I was little, my mother used to scare me with stories about people who ate too many sweets and got black teeth which eventually fell out. Her scare-tactics did not, by any means, help combat my obsessive sweet tooth, but they added yet another phobia into my interminable arsenal: the fear of people with black teeth. I find it difficult to look people with bad teeth in the eyes, because I know I will, at some point, avert my gaze onto their teeth with a convulsively disgusted expression on my end. This was my reaction the first time I found myself ordering an espresso at Las Primas on Wrangelstraße. It was about two years ago and I had gone there with a friend of mine on a perfect summer day. As the waitress smiled at us I could not help but notice one of her front teeth was made of gold while the rest were pitch black with completely rotten gums. I cringed and twitched and vowed never to come back.

This ridiculously long introduction brings us to this week’s events. It was one of these days when you feel like eating many small things rather than a real meal. It called for tapas and I had to meet friends later in Friedrichshain. The turn of events made it clear there was no way I could avoid checking out the tapas at Las Primas. I braced myself and prepared to meet that revolting set of teeth yet again.

Having only seen the place from the outside, I had expected the inside to be utterly filthy. I don’t know why, but it was just an illogical premonition, which fortunately proved to be wrong. The café/bar/restaurant is run down in a way that cries both “Kreuzberg” and “Spain” at the same time: dirty-pastel walls combined with tables crammed up together and covered by unappealing tablecloths. There is an evening menu with an appealing selection of main courses, but we decided to go for the tapas. I was delighted to see the choice of tapas was rather limited and the menu did not go on for eternities. There are about twelve dishes for the unit price of 4.00 € and six more for 5.00 €.

Tapas

Flan

We chose Pincho de Tortilla (a piece of tortilla, 4.00 €), Patatas al all-i-oli (fried potatoes in aioli sauce, 4.00 €), pintxo queso cabra (fried goat’s cheese with caramelised onions, 4.00 €), chorizo riojano (pieces of chorizo baked in white wine sauce, 4.00 €), pintxo de terena con reduccion de balsamico (slices of steak in balsamico sauce, 5.00 €) and gambas al ajillo (prawns in white wine sauce, 5.00 €). It was all quite endearing – small plates that were still large enough to get a good taste of the dish. The tortilla was unspectacularly nice, as tortillas are supposed to be like. The potatoes were nothing more than nice, but the aioli was fantastic. The cheese was very good quality and it came in a large portion with very good onions. The chorizo was also quite good quality, but the sauce was just alright. However, the two surprises were provided by the two 5.00 € dishes, with the meat being nothing less than excellent and the gambas turning out to be rather disappointing (the bland sauce killed them, which is quite annoying, as I find killing prawns to be a mortal sin). At the end of the day, most of the tapas were good,if not very good. The only real problem was the stale bread, which ruined the idea of truly enjoying the sauces. I then took a flan (the Spanish version for crème caramel, 2.70 €) to give the meal a good closure. It was alright, but not too convincing: Good size and perfect taste, but the texture (which is probably the most important part) was a bit scruffy.

Las Primas is a good choice of venue for good and hearty tapas. It is one of these places in Kreuzberg that manage to combine both roughness and pretentiousness, but it’s still pleasing enough as long as you avoid the waitress’s million pesos smile. I know it’s not politically correct to slag off people with bad dental hygiene, but I just can’t help it. Despite the bad teeth, the stale bread and the unconvincing flan, four prints seem like what the place deserves.

Overall mark: 

Las Primas

Wrangelstraße 54, 10997 Berlin (Kreuzberg)
Tel: +49 (0)30 60 03 11 32


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