Berlin on a Platter

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

Meierei

The Kaspressknödel (cheese dumpling) floating in that plate was pretty heavenly, all gooey and chunky and wonderful, but the broth is what really got me. I have yet to master a good beef broth and the folks cooking at Meierei gave me serious broth envy. There are clearly real cooks running the kitchen (a rarity in this city) and it's a pleasure to eat what they're making.

A small sliver of a place on Kollwitzstraße in Prenzlauer Berg, Meierei serves up Alpine specialties for lunch: hearty goulashes with fork-tender, high-quality meat, delicate broths with various "Einlagen" of dumplings or strips of omelets, chewy, crusty pretzels and salads. It also functions as a small-scale deli-bakery, selling big rounds of bread, imported hot chocolate mixes, great bags of traditional Swiss spice cookies, Austrian wine and more.

I loved sitting in the window on a bar stool, slurping up my savory broth and watching the world walk by. We've only got a few weeks left of the kind of weather suited to this food, so I plan on making the most of them.

Meierei
Kollwitzstraße 42
10405 Berlin
(030) 921 295 73

Wasabi Macadamia Nuts

I cannot take any credit at all for this discovery, it was my friend Anna who introduced me to these fantastic things. I don't even like macadamia nuts, for Pete's sake. Or at least I didn't until Seeberger took a bunch of them and coated them in wasabi dust.

Holy Moses, people, these are good. They're like the richer, creamier version of wasabi peas, a little less crunchy but with no less of a spicy bite. Buy them now, thank me later (or curse me, depending on how addicted you get).

Tacos Berlin

As anyone will tell you, New York may have Jean-Georges and Mario Batali, more than one Chinatown and the Tavern on the Green, but good Mexican food is few and far between. That coupled with my age-old dislike of cilantro conspired to keep me in the dark about just how good real Mexican food can be. A trip to Baja in 2007 cured me, but quick, and I even learned to love cilantro, well, at certain moments.

I'll never forget the dusty little town we stopped in for lunch one day that September, a stray dog watching us as we ate our dripping tacos, sliced radishes at the ready, incendiary green sauce drizzled everywhere. It was one of those special moments where everything was just right: the people, the food, the strange, buzzing heat of the midday sun. I fell hard that day.

Anyway. I'll admit I was surprised to find tacos almost as good as those and certainly far better than anything I've had in Berlin or New York at a sweet little taco truck parked along the canal in Neukölln last weekend. Three euros buys you two little pork tacos, fresh and hot and delicious, from a friendly vendor who takes the orders while her slightly frantic coworker mans the flat-top. We ate them standing up, pork juice and sauce dripping down our hands and even though a chilly Berlin afternoon is nothing like a sunny Mexican noon, it was still a lovely moment. Suddenly I had visions of a party in the park this summer with the taco truck at the ready. Who's with me?

My other question is, when is this taco truck opening up an actual hole-in-the-wall taqueria? Soon? Tomorrow? Please?

Tacos Berlin
hola@tacosberlin.com
(0176) 851 26 284

Berkis at Winterfeldtplatz

I almost don't want to write about Berkis, because it's already hard enough to get a seat in this place. But I like it so much that I can't keep it a secret. The first time I went to Berkis, just off of Winterfeldtplatz, we actually stopped in late for a sandwich after a movie at its little take-out corner, next to the main room of the restaurant. We had simple gyros sandwiches, but they were really exceptional. The meat was so delicious, the fries were fresh and snappy, the tzatziki was thick and gorgeous. For three euros a pop, the sandwiches were a steal (the meat is all organic and humanely raised).

Ever since that evening, I've only been back to the actual restaurant, which is so good I may never eat another one of their gyros sandwiches again (though that would be a shame). Berkis makes authentic home-cooked Greek food, simple grilled fish, lovely meze. It's a good, reliable neighborhood spot that makes me curse not living in the neighborhood every time I pass it.

I almost always just order off the daily specials menu, because I've had such roaring successes from there over the past year (long-stewed lamb in tomato sauce, falling off the bone; veal and artichokes braised in a lemony sauce; tender grilled octopus; you get the picture).

The last time I went, I ordered these long roasted peppers to start. Slightly peppery and slicked with good oil, lemon juice and little slivers of garlic and chopped parsley, they were delicious. I could have eaten a whole plate only of these, mopping up the juices with bread.

Next was a simple grilled orata that was one of the best pieces of fish I'd ever eaten. Almost sweet with freshness, cooked exactly right, with just the right amount of charred flavor, it almost melted off the bones.

The fish came with a side of simple vegetables: long-cooked Swiss chard, boiled potatoes, drab-looking squash and carrots. But the Greeks are like the Italians in this respect. They know how to cook the ever-loving daylight out of vegetables in just the right way, leaving you with intensely flavored, sweet vegetables so wonderful you would - once again - be happy with only these for dinner.

Berkis
Winterfeldtstraße 45
10781 Berlin
(030) 779 00 402

Bibimbap on Bundesallee

Just behind the bus stop on Bundesallee where I used to stand as a shrimpy 6th grader, waiting for the city bus that would take me to Fehrbelliner Platz, where the school bus would be waiting to take me down to school in Zehlendorf, there's now a big Korean grocery store called Silla. Compared with other "Asiamärkte" in Berlin, Silla is by far the neatest and cleanest and brightest that I've been to. It also seems to have the best prices.

And it happens to serve my favorite bibimbap in Berlin. (I'm not a fan of Ixthys, though I know it's a lot people's favorite. The Bible verses creep me out, not to mention the sticky menus and the so-so food.) Silla's bibimbap is impeccably made and tastes fresh as can be. And it's so nice to eat lunch with your eyes watering, don't you think?

Silla has a lunch counter, too, you see. The menu is short and I really only ever order the bibimbap, because the other stuff feels overly sauced to me (though Max is always happy with what he gets and there's no skimping on hot sauce). The bibimbap comes sizzling in its little bowl, with a healthy dollop of chile paste, fresh little batons of cucumber, seaweed, some unidentified greens, a tangle of bean sprouts, you know the drill. The egg is always perfect: the white just set, the yolk still molten.

I find waiting the right amount of time before starting to stir everything together is always the trickiest bit of eating bibimbap, because when the dish gets set down before me, the scent of sesame seeds wafting up to my nose, I am instantly ravenous. But I also love that crust the rice forms.

While you wait for lunch, you can walk around the store and go shopping. My favorite Korean barley tea, tamarind paste from Thailand, big plastic bags of Korean red pepper, homemade kimchi, Japanese vinegar, pickled ginger. It's all there and then some.

Silla
Bundesallee 23
10717 Berlin
(030) 863 95 300