Turkish Delight

Mercan - Kreuzberg

Parents are strange creatures. And stranger still is how often we can anticipate each and every one of their reactions. And yet, the strangest of all is how we – after dozens of years around them – still let these reactions get to us. My father is easiest to anticipate in restaurants. He has very clear tastes and preferences. They start and end with the word “simplicity”.

Everything that is not “simple”- which might mean dimmed lights, a structured menu and superfluously agreeable design - is quickly branded with the annihilating Hebrew umbrella term “faltzany”, which literally translates to the adjective form of “farting through one’s teeth”. For the sake of transgenerational fairness, I should state that this is a fairly modern word (unlike the rest of my father’s Hebrew vocabulary, which usually remains a relic from the jolly 1970’s, when Israelis still wore khaki trousers and wrote songs about peace). The only thing is that my dad uses it generically to slag off whatever he might dislike or consider as too middle class.

My own interaction with my father is usually based on feeble attempts to hide the fact I have become an espresso-drinking-blog-writing-twat who likes working in cafés – unmistakeably middle class to the bone. Making it work requires the right background, which is to take him to places he’d like: family owned cheap restaurants with good and hearty food. Plastic flowers and strip lights are only an advantage set in place to put him at ease. And yet, even with Berlin’s abundance of Eckkneipen, finding a down-to-earth place that actually serves good food is quite a challenge.

Which is why I was bound to end up at Mercan on Wiener Straße at some point. Never has there been a place so perfect for a father-son talk as Mercan. It is one of the few accessible places left in Kreuzberg that remind you the place had originally been a Turkish neighbourhood. The space inside is generous, with over two rooms decorated with the best colourful overdose of oriental kitsch you’d find in living rooms of the likes of my aunt (whose porcelain dole collection epitomises her life’s work). It all seems to be just right – the bright lights, the plastic flowers, the mirrors and the colours. It is just right.

It was a warm summer’s evening though. We chose to sit in the improvised garden outside and went inside to order. Dinner is based on a fixed-rate menu of 6 € that includes one main course to be chosen from a collection of promisingly steamy pans, a side of either rice or bulgur and another small dish from the display case, which can be either a salad (tomato salad or yoghurt dip) or a dessert (either sütlac, kompot or revani). Any additional element costs one Euro. Now that’s a pleasingly simple system.

Aubergine

Meat balls

Our main courses were meatballs in yoghurt sauce and a stuffed aubergine, both with a side of bulgur. We then had a tomato salad, a revani (sweet semolina cake drenched in rose water) and a sütlac (rice pudding) for dessert. Everything had a pleasingly high quality. The meatballs were tasty and the yoghurt sauce was rich and savoury with a touch of spiciness that enriched its general taste. The aubergine was good as well: soft and juicy with flavoursome filling. The sütlac was good, assuming the person eating it was into it (I personally think that rice pudding is one of the most repulsive inventions made by man, but I was assured by my partner in crime that it was good quality Turkish rice pudding, which is generally softer than the Greek or German ones). I enjoyed the rivani very much as well. It was soft and pleasing and it kicked the sugar level in my blood up to levels I do not wish to imagine.

Next time my father finds his way to Berlin I will have to take him to dinner at Mercan’s. The food was basic and far from being a revelation, but it was a throroughly pleasant experience with high quality, firendly service and stuffed bellies as a result. It felt like the right place to appreciate Turkish food.

Overall mark: 

Mercan

Wiener Straße 10, 10999 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30 612 85841


View Larger Map

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


View Larger Map