Berlin on a Platter

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

Celebrating Asian Tapas at Transit

Oh, how I have despaired over the state of Asian food in Berlin. There are a few gems here and there, but for the most part it's a sad state of affairs - sticky-sweet sauces, deep-fried foods, "Thai" sushi (heaven preserve us) and other abominations. Where were the loud dim sum halls I knew from New York, filled with stone-faced ladies pushing carts filled with myriad kinds of delicate dim sum? Where were my beloved pea shoots? Cambodian sandwiches? Malaysian laksas?

Gone, baby, gone - that's what happens when you leave New York for Berlin. You leave behind cockroaches, expensive apartments, leaky subways and transcendant Asian food. But I decided I could live with that. After all, I moved to Berlin for far better reasons than the food. Right? Right.

When Max went out to dinner with a friend last year and came home raving about the restaurant, Transit on Rosenthaler Strasse, I was interested but on my guard. Max was known to order "Thai" curry, after all, from a dodgy "Chinese" storefront on Lietzenburger Strasse run by Vietnamese cooks. But he also fell in love with the underground food courts in Flushing, gobbling up incendiary dan dan noodles and cumin-dusted Xinjiang meat skewers. So I knew he knew from good Asian food.

The restaurant had a small plates menu and Max couldn't stop talking about all the crazy flavors, textures and tastes he had sampled in each plate. Asian tapas? It sounded gimmicky and weird to me. But he was so enthusiastic and so excited that I had try it for myself.

It turns out he was right - Transit is delicious.

The menu is made up of a bunch of small plates with goofy names. Chicken Little, Bathing Beauty, Little Swimmer - you get the picture. The food ranges from spicy (really) Thai salads (green papaya, grilled beef, chunks of fruit with chile and peanuts) to velvety curries to a luscious assortment of dough-wrapped delights like duck with plum sauce in Chinese pancakes with slivers of cucumber or minced chicken and mushrooms in steamed rice dough. It's a mish-mash of Thai and Vietnamese dishes with some Chinese and Indonesian influences.

From the meat to the vegetables, everything is very fresh and nothing tastes canned, not even the crazy sweet-sour sauce enveloping deep-fried chicken skin, pineapples and peanuts. This is definitely the menu's trashiest offering (and Max's guilty pleasure). To balance it out, though, you can order a plate of stir-fried vegetables, which, on our last visit, included gai lan as well as regular broccoli, and that made me almost as happy as a plate of pea shoots would.

For two people, we usually order somewhere between 6 and 8 dishes. The room is bustling and busy (make sure you have a reservation if you go) and in the summer, there's a lovely garden out back as well. Who knew that of all places, this one would turn into the place we go when we have something to celebrate? Berlin is full of surprises.

Transit
Rosenthaler Strasse 68
10119 Berlin
(030) 247 816 45

Barbara's Kaffeetafel - Lunch at the Market

These past few weeks have been of the magical Berlin sort. You know, the kind where you walk outside your front door and are sort of overwhelmed with the loveliness of Berlin. Or is it just me? In any case, I'm grateful for it, for all the trees losing their blossoms and carpeting the streets with white and pink clouds, for the good, fresh air, for the happy crowds spilling out from cafés and on the banks of the lake near my house, for getting to live here.

And I'm grateful that when I go to a green market as lovely and bustling as the one at Winterfeldtplatz (so buzzy and crowded compared to when I used to go there with my mother, thirty (!) years ago), gathering up rhubarb, scallions, asparagus, fresh butter and good bread galore, thereby working up a slightly ferocious appetite, that there is bowl of puckery potato salad and Maultaschen in a savory, homemade broth just waiting for me, right there in the market.

Barbara's Kaffeetafel sells all manners of cakes (and a seriously gorgeous, burnished poppyseed Hefezopf), but what seems to truly be the bulk of her market business, at least, are her homemade Maultaschen (Swabian ravioli, for lack of a better descriptor), filled with meat (traditionally) or a spinach-fresh cheese mix. You can buy the Maultaschen by the piece to take with you or you can order a few for lunch right then and there. They come floating in a light, tasty beef broth or are served next to vinegary, faintly oniony potato salad (I could eat just the potato salad and be happy, too - it's pretty stellar). They're very good - savory and filling, the pasta dough toothsome with just the right amount of chew. The stand also sells freshly prepared salads - sliced beets or cabbage slaw, for example. Barbara's Kaffeetafel also caters, makes wedding cakes, offers cooking classes at your house, even delivers homemade cakes to you, if desired.

We ate our lunch standing up at the table next to the stand, just like I used to eat my Würstchen on that very same market square as a little kid with a bowl cut and stripey pants, and I practically got the shivers with happiness at this whole full-circle business.

Burrito Bowls at Dolores

I'd heard about Mission-style burritos being served at a Mexican joint in Mitte called Dolores for a while. I wasn't all that eager to get there, since burritos had never really been my thing. But one night, after a movie at Babylon and starved for dinner in those darkened streets where food can be very hard to find, we found ourselves looking into the bright, colorful Dolores.

It turns out that Dolores doesn't just do burritos. Their menu reads like a souped-up version of Chipotle's, with burrito bowls, salads, agua frescas and soups rounding out the offerings. We put together our burrito bowls, which came topped with homemade tortilla chips and sat down to dig in. I was underwhelmed. The iceberg lettuce piled on top skeeved me out a little and the food beneath it was just okay. Eh, I thought. Another disappointment. Par for the course.

But my friends Margue and Daniel, whose tastes I always trust, raved about Dolores whenever I saw them and when we found out that Dolores was opening another location on Wittenbergplatz, far closer to all of us than the Mitte location, they could barely contain their glee. What was I missing? I had to go back and find out.

I am so glad I did. For one, the Wittenbergplatz location is lovely. It's airier and bigger than the original one in Mitte, with a lovely view out onto the square, the fountain and KaDeWe.

Second of all, the food was really good. According to their website, the Wittenbergplatz location is offering some new items that the Mitte location doesn't yet have, like soft tacos. I saw pork pibil on the menu, made with organic meat, achiote and habañero peppers, and I practically did a double take. They must mean business, I thought. After all, there's no way to tame down a habañero, right? So that's what I got in my burrito bowl, along with a couple different spicy salsas (if you eschew sour cream and cheese, they'll let you get two salsas).

The meat was saucy, complex, spicy and falling apart at the poke of a fork, while the salsas were fresh and delicious and as spicy as they promised to be. In other words, just right. I ate up my entire bowl, even the iceberg lettuce. (Which still skeeves me out. But I'm willing to look past it now.) And couldn't get over how good it was, especially after I'd been so underwhelmed the first time. (I blame it on the chicken?)

I've been back a number of times since. I even ordered the chipotle soy meat once and you know what? Combined with the fajita veggies and the three-chile salsa cruda, it wasn't half bad. In fact, I could get kind of used to it. But the pork pibil is still the thing to order here.

Long live the habañero! Bless you, Dolores, for keeping things spicy.

Dolores Wittenbergplatz
Bayreuther Strasse 36
10789 Berlin
(030) 548 21 590

The Best Ice Cream in Berlin

I was first introduced to Vanille-Marille last summer, by a dear friend who lives near the tiny, pink Steglitz location of this homemade ice cream manufactory. We were gathered around her dining table for lunch when her husband slipped out the door and returned, 15 minutes later, with little cups filled with mango sorbet, dark chocolate ice cream, raspberry sorbet, pink grapefruit and more. We all - aged 74 to 3 - fell silent as we spooned up dessert. My mouth sort of glowed from the inside out - the flavors of the fruit sorbets were clear as bells. The dark chocolate was silky, but not too rich, and packed a huge wallop of pure, well, chocolatiness.

I went back several times last summer, even brought Molly with me when she came to visit. I decided eventually that pear (Birne "Gute Luise") was my favorite flavor of all, having long been smitten by the fruit flavors in particular. Berthillon and Grom may be famous worldwide, but Vanille-Marille could absolutely beat them.

Vanille-Marille opened for the season a few weekends ago so this past weekend, I finally took Max to see what all the fuss was about. We drove to the Kreuzberg location, just around the corner from Mehringdamm, and found a big line. But undeterred, and thrilled to be in the sunshine, we stood and waited our turn. It's just as well to have a little bit of extra time, after all, how could you choose your flavors properly otherwise?

I got Marille aus der Wachau (apricot from Austria) and strawberry with mascarpone, both ice creams, not sorbets. The strawberry was very nice, creamy and speckled with little seeds, but the apricot instantly shot to the top of my list, surpassing even the pear. You know how when you eat a great sorbet, you think to yourself that it tastes even better than the actual fruit its based on? That you'd rather be eating that than the fruit? That's what the apricot ice cream was like.

Max got caramel beurre salé, Madagascar vanilla, and sesame ice cream with caramelized honey. The sesame, in particular, was fabulous. Roasty-toasty, shot through with honey, it was complex but still delicious, a grown-up dessert masquerading as an afternoon snack. I also loved the salted caramel.

There are still so many flavors I want to try, like elderflower-mint or Sicilian pistachio (can it top Grom's stellar pistachio, I wonder?) or marzipan with chocolate, plums and a shot of Schnapps or rhubarb-strawberry with vanilla. But I also just want to keep eating the ones I've already fallen for, to faithfully order apricot and pear each time I return.

What a conundrum, I know. Thank goodness for ice cream season!

Vanille-Marille now sells pint containers filled with single flavors to take home (or bring to a dinner party, lucky ducks).


Vanille-Marille
Hagelberger Straße 1, 10965 Berlin
or
Leydenalle 92, 12165 Berlin
(030) 789 54 731

TU Cafeteria Lunch with a View

When my father moved to Berlin 40 (!) years ago, he had an office in the Telefunken Haus on Ernst-Reuter-Platz. Whenever I pass it, which is all the time, it makes me think of him. Imagine my delight when our friends told us to meet them for lunch there one day, in the cafeteria on the top floor.

The TU has a cafeteria on the top floor and it's open to the public. You don't need to be a student or an employee of the university, you just need to know where to go (all the way to the top). When you alight, you'll have a pretty spectacular view. Siegessäule! Fernsehturm! If you squint, Brandenburger Tor!

And in the other direction, Bismarckstraße aka Kaiserdamm, Teufelsberg, Funkturm. Plus, solar panels!

The day we were there, the cafeteria was serving vegetarian pasta or Königsberger Klopse with mashed potatoes and salad.

It's cafeteria food, you know, so it's not winning any awards. But it was warm and filling and the capers had a vinegary bite and the salad was fresh and snappy. (Also, uh, it's cheap.) Plus the view is hard to be beat. While we ate and chatted, I liked imagining my 20-something father in his office somewhere below us, doing his math, looking out the window, contemplating his new Berlin life.

Cafeteria TU Skyline
Ernst Reuter Platz 7
10587 Berlin
(030) 939 39 7780