Berlin on a Platter

Japanese Imbiss Heno Heno

Yes, folks, another day, another lunch spot on Kantstraße. I can't help it! It's my little Asiatown.

Actually, Heno Heno is also open for dinner. It's a little sliver of a Japanese Imbiss around the corner from Stuttgarter Platz and I first read about it on Mel's blog. It's really a hole-in-the-wall: There's a counter with stools and then three tiny little tables only big enough for two rather slim eaters. (A warning: There's no restroom.) The vibe is all rather relaxed and homey, which befits the simple menu. Also, there's always good music playing.

Heno Heno serves homestyle Japanese cooking, with almost no sushi in sight (the exception being oshi sushi, an Osakan method of making sushi by pressing rice and herring, in this case, together in a wooden box). There are a few simple appetizers (house-pickled vegetables and onigiri are the plan for my next visit), a few rice dishes topped with meat or vegetables and an array of noodle soups (either udon or soba). That's pretty much it.

The first time I went, I had an udon soup that seemed a lot murkier and grainier than I'd been used to at the noodle shops I used to go to in New York. But it certainly tasted quite authentic, nice and seaweedy and sweet with miso.

The next time, I couldn't resist the edamame (which came at room temperature, sadly; I'd kind of wanted them piping hot), which were delicious - I spooned a little bit of the spice mixture from its beautiful bowl with that delicate little spoon onto the edamame plate and then dunked each bean into the pepper.

For my lunch, I ordered the vegetarian don with an egg on top - the smallest size. Perfect for my appetite, I could just about finish it. What you get is a bowl of hot rice topped with a very molten poached egg, ground sesame seeds, slivered seaweed, cooked greens, sliced scallions, a few mushrooms and shredded carrots. If there was more in there, it was well camouflaged. Using your chopsticks, you hack and mix everything together until you have a fragrant, sweet-salty, chewy mixture of rice and vegetables and sticky egg yolk clumping together under your chopsticks.

With a mug or two of hoji-cha, roasted green tea, it was just the thing for a gray day. Sitting at a small table, marveling at the tiny wooden pepper spoon, a ceramic tea cup nestle in my hands and a few simple Japanese cooking instruments hung over the stove, I almost felt like I'd been teleported somewhere far away. I love that feeling.


Heno Heno
Kantstraße 65
10627 Berlin
(030) 663 073 70

Tandur Oven Bread at Lasan

At Kottbusser Tor, there's a hideous block of apartment buildings built over Adalbertstraße. Tucked underneath the apartment block is a Kurdish Iraqi restaurant called Lasan that boasts an authentic tandur (tandoor) oven for bread-baking.

I've spent many an afternoon standing at the window looking in at the ovoid clay tandur oven, its interior glowing red-hot. A baker neatly portions off balls of bread dough, all the exact same size, then rolls them out quickly with his hands, drapes them over a towel-wrapped mold and then, using the mold, quickly sticks the raw bread dough onto the glowing wall of the tandoor oven. Minutes later, the bread dough puffs and blisters and soon enough, the baker pulls the finished disc of bread off the hot oven wall and flings it, rather elegantly, really, onto a cooling rack. It's mesmerizing stuff.

But I'd never actually gone in and eaten anything there before. Until last weekend, when we were out for a long stroll on Sunday afternoon and found ourselves famished at a strange, in-between time when it wasn't quite lunchtime anymore and it was still far too early for dinner. We headed inside Lasan and figured we could find something light to tide us over. I ordered a plate of hummus and Max got a plate of tabouleh (tabbule, taboulé, as you wish) and a kebab.

I'll get to the bread in a minute, but first of all, people, this tabouleh was a revelation. I'd go so far as to say it was the platonic ideal of all tabouleh. It was incredibly fresh and zingy. Every mouthful felt refreshing. There were tiny flecks of minced onion all throughout, but the onion flavor was really restrained and delicate (which won me over, since big chunks of harsh onions in my mouth never fail to irritate me to no end) - perhaps they'd soaked the onion in ice water before using it? Light and fluffy and with just the right ratio of parsley to bulgur and tomato (equally finely diced as the tomato), I couldn't stop stealing forkfuls off of Max's plate. It was delicious. (Lasan offers a tabouleh sandwich, which might be what I have to order next time I'm there).

The hummus was just fine, creamy and earthy and not too heavy on the tahini. Swiping it with piping hot pieces of tandoor bread torn off the round placed between us was the real fun. Make sure when you go that you get a fresh, hot round of bread. It's crispy on the bottom and chewy on top and fragrant and irresistible. If it's cooled, it loses a lot of its charm.

Another highlight on the menu for a slightly, um, larger gathering is a whole roasted lamb with enough bread for 20 people for the bargain price of 190,- euros. (They'll deliver to your home, if you like.) You'd have to order the sides separately, but doesn't this sound like a pretty great reason to have a party?

Restaurant Lasan
Adalbertstraße 96
10999 Berlin
(030) 698 14 098

Central and Latin American Delights at Aqui España

The other day, on the way to lunch, I stopped in at Aqui España on Kantstraße, just because I was feeling curious. Imagine my delight at finding all sorts of Central and Latin American treats therein, like Mexican goat's milk cajeta, canned tomatillos, tamale wrappers, guava paste, dried salt cod, dried pasilla, guajillo, ancho, arbol and chipotle chiles, dulce de leche in a Russian doll's variety of jar sizes, several different countries' worth of masa and achiote in both ground and pellet form. (There is also a large selection of Spanish and Portuguese goods, from olive oils to cured meats, wines to dry goods.)

I left with a can of tomatillos (I'd only ever eaten them fresh, but some casual Googling assured me that canned tomatillos are a good thing, much like canned tomatoes) and a jar of hearts of palm, but I can't wait to go back for all the ingredients for the Mexican feast I plan to cook soon.

Aqui España
Kantstraße 34
10625 Berlin
(030) 312 3315

Luxa's Hot Sauce

Have you been to Luxa on Torstraße at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz? You need to go, if only for the hot sauce. The hot sauce, people. The hot sauce. It is good enough to eat with a spoon. It is good enough to make you sit around at home and contemplate why this hot sauce is so darn good and what could make it so. Sometimes I think about going to Luxa and asking them for a hot sauce sandwich. Heaven on a plate, trust me.

It's obsession-worthy, especially when paired with their yogurt sauce (that I'll bet you thought was tahini in the photo above, right?). That yogurt sauce, all sour and cool, paired with the hot sauce, which is deeply tomatoey and fruity - but not sweet - and spicy and incredibly fresh-tasting and just, well, perfect - it's enough to make you never want to eat another meat sandwich in Berlin again.

Luxa is run by Kurds (I'm assuming Turkish ones) and it sells schawarma and falafel and an array of Middle Eastern sweets that look, well, sweet. They're not the friendliest food vendors in this city, but I don't even really care. Because of that hot sauce. That hot sauce! It makes up for a multitude of sins.

Luxa
Torstraße 56
10119 Berlin
0171 187 1110

Classic French at Le Piaf

Readers, I'm sorry for the long silence. Finishing the manuscript for my book consumed my August, our honeymoon blessedly took us far away in September and now in October, I've been waiting impatiently to hear back from my editor while battling a nasty flu and trying to meet a clutch of deadlines for freelance assignments, while all the cellphone photos documenting the few meals I had out in Berlin over the past few months languish on my cell.

In any case, I thought I'd make it up to you by coming back with one of my favorite restaurants in Berlin. I might even go so far as to call it my favorite restaurant in Berlin, though, I'm always wary of hyperbole like that. Suffice it to say that this place is pretty darn special. I'm talking about Le Piaf, a small French restaurant tucked into a tiny Vorgarten on Charlottenburg's Schloßstraße.

Run by two French men, one in the kitchen and one in the front of the house, it has a sharply edited everyday menu (terrine and cornichons or snails to start, a few salads, three mains) and a regional menu that rotates every month or so, written up on a few big chalkboards that are propped up around the restaurant. One month, the focus might be on Brittany; the next, for example, is on Provence. There are wine pairings to go with the regional menu and a prix fixe option. The restaurant is made up of a few small rooms, with only a few tables squeezed into each one. This gives the warm, cozy feeling of being in someone's home.

Last winter, Max and I went there one weekend and decided to have a proper French dinner. The regional focus that month was on Burgundy, so I had oeufs en meurette (Max had a plate of tiny, crisp, greaseless fried fish). My poached egg with its molten yolk came in a little casserole pot, balanced on a slice of savory, sauce-soaked toasted bread and doused in more of that delicious, winey meurette sauce. It was hard not to gobble the whole thing up in a matter of seconds. I tried to restrain myself. There was a slab calves' liver in a mustardy cream sauce as a main course, alongside a fabulous slice of potato gratin, all the better for wiping up the delicious sauce. And for dessert, we had vacherin, a confection made up of layers of meringue, whipped cream, raspberry purée and pistachios, all bathed in a pool of not-too-sweet crème anglaise. I thought I was too full for more than a forkful and ended up battling Max for the last shards of dessert.

Everything was so correct, as the French would say. It all tasted just as it should. It was clean, simple, pure food, and done just right. In fact, we ate better at Le Piaf than we did in the entire week we spent in Paris over New Year's (with one exception), much to our surprise.

I could scarcely believe my good fortune. This was the best French food I'd eaten in so long. And it was right around the corner from our place! Plus the waiters were charming, there was a cheese tray (with cheeses from Maître Philippe) and really good Crémant d'Alsace for the apéritif (I am a sucker for sparkling wine). It swiftly become our place for celebrations (if it were open for lunch, we would have celebrated our wedding there, too). Everyone needs that kind of place, don't you think? Le Piaf is it for me.

On the last night of August, the evening I finished my manuscript, I decided I needed to do a little something special for myself. I hadn't showered in days and I'd barely slept. I'd deteriorated to feeding myself potato chips and cereal. The glamorous life of a writer, well, it ain't so glamorous on deadline. But that night in August, I was finally done. I needed to celebrate, but I also needed to be alone. I wasn't ready to even face another person yet. So I headed to Le Piaf. The hostess did a little bit of a double take when I asked for a table for one, but she recovered soon enough and before too long I was sitting alongside a mirrored wall, with a glass of Crémant in front of me.

For dinner, I ordered two appetizers, since I didn't have much of an appetite. First came one huge artichoke with a little pot of creamy vinaigrette (the second pot was spiked with herbs, I didn't like it as much). I peeled off leaf after leaf from the artichoke, dipping it into the vinaigrette and sucking off the sweet vegetal flash with my bottom teeth. The heart was tender and silky. With each leaf, I felt my old self come back. 

I followed with a carpaccio of sea bass and white peaches. The peach slices were firm as could be, but incredibly fragrant and their sweet flavor went beautifully with the fish. There was lemon juice and salt and pepper sprinkled on top to tie everything together. It was the perfect single girl meal: light and restorative, a little indulgent, and most of all, fun. 

Though the hostess had been a little awkward when I asked to sit alone, the French waiter couldn't have been more gracious and polite. I felt really special that night, just as I'd hoped, just as I do every time I go there. I felt well-fed and taken care of, which is a rarity in restaurants these days, not just in Berlin. It's such a little gem, Le Piaf - I hope it never changes. (It's been there for 15 years; let's hope it has just as many years ahead of it.)

Le Piaf
Schloßstrasse 60
14059 Berlin
(030) 342-2040

Tapas at Bar Raval

Any place that serves sparkling wine in a coupe instead of a flute automatically shoots to the top of my list. It's a silly little detail, sure, but drinking out of a coupe feels special and a little glam and I really kind of love it. It always makes me think of Marilyn Monroe trying to seduce Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. This is to say that our late dinner at Bar Raval on Friday got off to the right start.

I loved the space, a sort of sprawling corner restaurant on Görlitzer Park with bar stools and high tables in one corner and cozy wooden tables and banquettes in the other. Daniel Brühl, the half-Spanish, half-German actor of Goodbye Lenin fame, is one of the owners. Rumor has it that he's been to every tapas bar in Barcelona.

Our Spanish waitress was a doll. She was a little harried, but so professional and friendly and kind. She even apologized when a drink got delayed - something that hasn't happened to me (the apology, not the delay) since I left New York.

With our drinks came a complimentary little dish of olives, juicy, salty, green ones that we found ourselves fighting over. When we placed our order for tapas, we mostly stuck to the classics: pa amb tomaquet, tortilla (with vegetables), boquerones, croquetas, salt cod fritters and my very favorite, pimientos de padròn.

The pa amb tomaquat was lovely - the bread was toasted over an open flame and charred in places, the crumb was nicely soaked with tomato and olive oil. I could have eaten the whole plate (though I'm a bread-and-tomato fiend, so take that with a grain of flaky salt). The pimientos were piping hot and crunchy with salt. It's hard to get these wrong, isn't it? Max got three out of the four spicy ones, poor guy. The spicy one I had was so hot it made my eyes water.

The tortilla looked pretty classic, but when we sliced into it, we realized that the eggs were a thin casing around a juicy filling of mixed vegetables: zucchini, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, onions and mushrooms. It was incredibly filling. It wasn't the most ethereal tortilla I ever had, and Max said he would have preferred the classic potato tortilla, but for a change, it was nice.

The salt cod fritters were greaseless and crisp. And the ham-and-cheese croquetas, two to an order, were fantastic. One of those with a glass of cava and you'd have yourself the very best bar snack. I could barely finish mine - they were quite filling and rich with hammy flavor.

The boquerones (marinated white anchovies) were the one misstep in our meal - they didn't taste particularly fresh.

Still, it was one of the nicest dinners we've had out in a while. I loved the atmosphere in the restaurant, which was relaxed and jovial at the same time. We weren't really hungry at all by the end of dinner, but couldn't resist ordering the molten chocolate cake for dessert (so dated, it's true, but so delicious, too).

It was flavored with a little too much orange for my taste, but this didn't stop either one of us from practically licking the plate. The filling to casing ratio was sort of perfect and the hot chocolate mixed with the cold vanilla ice cream on the side, well, there's a reason this cake took the world by storm. And this was a darn good version of it.

When we got our bill, we were given two complimentary shots of an herbal liquor that tasted like fennel. Max was driving the car and I was so happy with our meal that I found myself enthusiastically drinking both. We walked out into the Kreuzberg night feeling pleasantly aglow with food and drink. It was such a good night.

Bar Raval
Lübbener Strasse 1
10997 Berlin
(030) 531 67 954

Brot & Butter's Quarkstulle

The fact that this slice of bread, moist and sour and sporting the thickest, crispiest crust, spread with butter and a half-centimeter of Joghurtquark flavored with chives and seasoned with salt, costs 4 euros and 50 cents (that's $6.40, to put it in perspective) is a little insane. In fact, if I let myself think about it, it's more than insane.

My solution? Not to think about it. And to go to Brot & Butter only rarely, when I'm feeling like I can spend that much money on breakfast (or a very light lunch). But it's too bad the service at Brot & Butter can be brusque and snappish, too. If I'm paying that much for a piece of bread with Quark, I'd like a polite waiter or at least a prompt one. But such is life in Berlin.

On the flip side, the Stulle is delicious. The bread was still warm and the moist crumb combined with the creamy, salty, savory topping was an absolute pleasure. I remember eating one of these last summer, when it was hot and gorgeous for weeks on end, sitting outside at one of the tables in front of Brot & Butter. I'd gone in to order something to drink and the very nice barista offered, faced with my indecision between hot tea or a glass of juice, to purée fresh strawberries into some buttermilk for me. It was such a delicious drink. He was so nice. I loved that morning.

The other day, when I ordered this Stulle, I asked the unsmiling waitress if they might be able to do that again. I probably should have known better when she turned away wordlessly and stalked back into the store. When she returned to my table, she plunked an unopened container of buttermilk, like you'd buy at the grocery store, in front of me with a glass. Ah, yes.

(How do people like this stay employed?)

 

Brot & Butter
Hardenbergstraße 4-5
10623 Berlin
(030) 263 00 346

Chinese Broccoli, My Love

Every so often, I wake up and think, "Today I need some Chinese food." And then, if I don't immediately go and eat some steamed dumplings or hot-and-sour soup, I spend the rest of the week in a weird funk where nothing else really tastes good or appeals to me. I don't have this admittedly strange habit with any other cuisine. Maybe it's a low-grade MSG addiction?

I think it harks back to my childhood when my father would faithfully order takeout from a Chinese restaurant near our apartment once a week. Not a single week went by without moo goo gai pan (2nd grade), moo shu pork (3rd grade), hot-and-sour soup (5th grade) and so on. In college and my New York years, I graduated to much spicier stuff, but my weekly calls to the local Chinese joint always remained a constant.

Let's not get into how much I miss "real" Chinese food in Berlin. I've beaten that one to death. Instead, let me tell you about how last week, I woke up with my faithful hankering and went to Aroma with my mother for gai lan and roast pork. It hit the spot.

After trying a lot of mediocre Chinese places in Berlin (from Ming Dynastie across from the Chinese embassy to the many holes-in-the-wall on Kantstrasse), Aroma is where I go whenever I need Chinese food. It reminds me of fancy Chinese restaurants in the States, with thick carpeting, an all-male wait staff and high prices. A good sign is that there are always a lot of Chinese families eating at the round tables.

Aroma has the tastiest dim sum in Berlin (it's not the Greatest Dim Sum Ever!, but it does the trick and that's good enough for me -  here's Mel's post that never fails to make my stomach growl) and although I ignore about 99% of their menu, I can never resist the gai lan (Chinese broccoli) or bok choy or pea shoots (if they have them).

To round out my order of delicious Chinese broccoli (crisp-tender, fragrant with garlic and sweet), I asked for a plate of barbecued pork, which was lacquered in the signature Chinese style. There was far too much of it, but it was tasty as could be. (Plus, never forget that leftover Chinese pork and cold rice make for a very nice fried rice the next day.)

My mother made the mistake of ordering some gloopy noodle dish with vegetables and pork that was totally insipid. So be forewarned, folks. You still have to be on your guard. The forces of bland, pan-Asian food lurk everywhere. But if you order wisely, you could be enjoying rice noodle rolls and stir-fried Chinese greens and lacquered pork very soon.

Aroma China Restaurant
Kantstrasse 58
10625 Berlin
(030) 375 91 628

Americana at Aldi

Aldi has a special "US" section going on right now, featuring products from Trader Joe's (not the dried fruit and nuts from Trader Joe's that Aldi carries all year round) emblazoned with an American flag and that are, as usual when discussing the "American" section in a German grocery store, a sort of hilarious take on how Germans see the American diet.

Hot dog buns, charcoal and pickle slices actually make sense. It's summer, after all, even if our Berlin July was much too rainy for grilling outdoors. Then there's cranberry sauce in a jar, which I thought about buying and saving for Thanksgiving, just for the kitsch factor, and fruit syrups for pancakes in maple syrup bottles, which just made me sad. Who the heck is putting that crap on pancakes?

I snagged the pickles, because German pickles continue to annoy me with their sweetness and lack of vim and vinegar, and also because I have been having a crazy hankering for cheeseburgers lately that is not going to let up until I just go ahead and eat one already, and since sandwich pickles, to me, are intimately linked with burgers, buying the pickles was almost like buying a cheeseburger.

(Let's not try to understand my thought process today, shall we? I'm missing my appendix.)

Sunday Brunch at Café Aroma

The sacred weekend brunch buffet is an institution in Berlin. And though it can be tempting to try out a different café each weekend, trekking across the city in search of 5 euro, all-you-can-eat, groaning tables, I'd venture a guess that you'll get mighty sick of the same array of bought-in-bulk cold cuts, bowls of fruit salad, cubed feta cheese with chopped tomatoes and arugula (at the progressive places!) and boiled eggs as the weeks go on. I know I did. 

Then Sylee told me that a favorite Italian restaurant of mine in Schöneberg, Café Aroma, also did a Sunday brunch. And that it was good! Not the usual cold cuts and Brötchen, she said, and that's really all I needed to know. We headed there the next weekend with some friends.

Café Aroma has been at the top of the adorable Hochkirchstraße, nestled into the Rote Insel part of Schöneberg, since 1987. Run by what seem to be an assortment of Italian friends, both in the kitchen and at the front of the house, it specializes in homey Italian food, simple and pleasing. On Sundays, the restaurant opens at 11:00 and boasts a groaning board placed directly opposite the bar when you walk in. Come hungry and be patient with the limitations of your own belly. You'll want to fill your plate several times.

There are tiny meatballs in tomato sauce so good I'd bottle it. There are lovely roast potatoes, squidgy and herbal. There's poached salmon and roasted peppers. Stuffed mushrooms and cauliflower in homemade béchamel. Wedges of frittata. Breadcrumb-stuffed calamari. Grilled slices of zucchini and eggplants. Little squares of lasagne. Slices of imported Italian salami, tender and almost sweet. Some dishes are there every time we go, some things are new each time we're there.

Everything on the brunch buffet could use an extra dose of salt, but this seems to be a Berlin-wide malaise. I don't really understand it. Otherwise the food is fresh and tasty and impressively varied. Aroma's not interested in using chafing dishes, which results in some dishes that should be served hot being a little lukewarm, but that doesn't really bother me (how un-Italian of me, I know). I'm just so pleased to have found a brunch spot that I love going to again and again.

If you've got room at the very end (I never, ever do), there's always tiramisù and fruit salad and a few other desserts (the last time we went, there were creampuffs and a berry-topped Bavarian cream).

It feels like our own little Berlin secret, to be nestled in Aroma's four walls on a sleepy Sunday morning, hearing the waitress banter in Italian with the bartender while we munch away contentedly. A walk up and down the streets of the Rote Insel afterwards, passing the cemetery where the Brothers Grimm are buried, helps with digestion and prolonging that languid Sunday feeling.

Café Aroma
Hochkirchstrasse 8
10829 Berlin
(030) 782 5821