Berlin on a Platter

Jäger und Sammler

All I have to show you from my dinner at Jäger und Sammler is this snapshot of the dining room, taken moments before I left after dinner. I was out with a group of girlfriends and vague acquaintances and felt sheepish about taking a photo when my dinner plate was first placed in front of me, so I hadn't. Eh, I thought to myself. The last I-don't-know-how-many meals I'd had out were such a disappointment that I hadn't even wanted to mention them on the blog. Why would this meal be any different? There was no point in shooting the meal anyway, I figured.

But then it turned out that my dinner, a piece of perfectly cooked salmon (I mean, perfect, folks, textbook) on a bed of sautéed spinach, fingerling potatoes and tiny roasted tomatoes, was delicious. So good that when I cleaned my plate, my first thought was actually to flag down the waitress and ask for another order. I'm not even kidding. It was so good.

The menu is tightly edited - there are only a handful of appetizers and entrées and only two desserts - and the focus is, I'd say, seasonal Italian with German influences. The room is warm yet airy, with Altbau flair - long wooden plank floors, Stuck on the ceiling, a big wall of cookbooks crammed in every which way. And the service is good, friendly, relatively quick. For Berlin, pretty great.

Two in our group ordered beef cheeks that came served on mashed potatoes with broccoli and brussels sprouts and the servings were massive - neither of them could finish their plate. Another ordered spaghetti marinara, in the Italian sense, with clams and mussels, and the serving was so dainty it would have passed as an appetizer in an American restaurant. So there was some unevenness to the portion sizes, I guess. But did I mention how perfect my salmon was? How moist and tender and flaky and delicious it was? How I wished I'd had twice the amount of spinach and tomatoes and potatoes on my plate because they were all so good? Right. Let's put the quibbles aside and just focus on how wonderful it felt to have such a simple, pleasing meal in such a nice space.

So wonderful, in fact, that I'm going back on Friday with my husband and close friends and I plan on trying far more from the menu this time: appetizers, maybe a dessert, and I'll definitely be stealing from our friends' plates. Stay tuned.

Jäger und Sammler
Grunewaldstraße 81
10823 Berlin-Schöneberg
Tel: 030 700 94 084

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

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

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

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

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

Taqueria Ta'Cabrón

Any out-of-work taqueros in Berlin looking for a job? Taqueria Ta'Cabrón is hiring and, from the looks of it, the kitchen seems like a nice place to work. The other day at lunchtime, there were a clutch of people in there, laughing and chatting away with each other in Spanish, rolling burritos and piling fillings onto tacos.

Psst, if you do take the job, can you do me a favor, though? And get the cooks to make the "really hot" hot sauce just a little hotter? Maybe slip a few extra chiles in here and there? Just a few. The thing is, the weird paralysis to serve anything hotter than a bell pepper that seems to infect every ethnic eatery in Berlin seems to have struck here, too, even though I know there are folks eating there every day who can definitely handle a few jalapeños or habañeros more. I just know it.

I came to Ta'Cabrón on the recommendation of my friend Mister Rios, who says it's as authentic as Mexican cooking gets in Berlin. The taqueria is a sunny, friendly room painted with bright colors. You order at the counter and then your food is brought to you. They serve everything from tacos to burritos to enchiladas and tostadas. There are daily specials (albondigas, perhaps, and a creamy soup to start) and even a dessert like flan. I ordered the tacos with cochinita pibil, long-cooked shredded pork topped with pickled onions (yum), and they came with a tiny tangle of shredded lettuce and cubed tomatoes as well as a little puddle of refried beans (delicious).

The tacos were very tasty, but sadly lacking in heat (the little glass bowl you see in the middle there is one of two freshly made "hot" sauces you can spoon over your food yourself. I was told that this one was the spicier version, but it really was pretty mild). I know I sound like a broken record on this blog - I'm starting to get sick of the same complaint over and over myself - but it's really frustrating to know that cooks the city over are dumbing down their food because of the perception that their main customer base can't handle the heat.

I wish - oh, how I wish! - I could give all those cooks and restaurateurs more confidence, promise them that if they cook the way they cook at home, with all the heat and spice that the recipes truly call for, they will find their customers! But something tells me they won't listen, not to this one lone voice.

I liked the tacos and can't wait to try the other things on the menu, the tostadas, for example, or one of the daily specials. Maybe, if I come often enough, they'll start to slip me more of the spicy stuff. Maybe. A girl can dream, after all.


Taqueria Ta'Cabrón
Skalitzer Straße 60
10999 Berlin
(030)

Udagawa on Kantstrasse

I like to think of Kantstrasse as my canteen - I can stroll there on my lunch break and then take my pick. What will it be today: Northern Chinese dumplings? Vegetarian soup noodles? Roast duck buns? Recently, we even found a restaurant called Udagawa serving good Japanese home cooking, as well as very fresh sushi. We had dinner there first, sitting in the back with a Chinese family, a couple on a rushed date and two girls in town for Fashion Week. A young man deftly fried tempura and katsu-don in the front of the restaurant, turning the pieces with two huge chopsticks, while in the back a sushi chef worked silently behind a curtained door. The second time we went for lunch and sat at a sunny front table looking out onto Kantstrasse, warming up like two cats on a couch.

Udagawa is listed as being an "Imbiss" and that's sort of the vibe you get when you're there. You place your order at the counter and then wait for it to be delivered (at dinnertime) or for someone to call you when your order is ready (at lunch).

But the food has nothing to do with Imbiss food. It's fresh, home-cooked and delicious. (If you're looking for Imbiss prices, too, you're in the wrong place, but I think that they're absolutely fair given the quality of what is being served.) The menu is pretty extensive: there are sushi platters, several different udon soups, a lot of cooked plates of meat or fish and tempura. There's nothing goofy going on here, no crazy rolls with fifty different kinds of fish crammed into them and no Pan-Asian silliness either (ahem, Kuchi). Just simple, homestyle food. My favorite.

The glazed mackerel over rice we had one night was delicious, the tempura at lunch was light and crispy, and the sushi is always pristine and fresh. (A nice touch were those tiny little shrimp with the heads and tails still on - they were sweet as can be.) It's a great little place to have in the neighborhood.

Udagawa
Kantstrasse 118/119
10625 Berlin
(030) 312 3014

Little Otik

I had such a good dinner on Friday night.

Imagine: A pickle plate. Mussels. Brussels sprouts and bacon. Bread charred over an open flame. The perfect blood orange drizzled with honey.

A bunch of girlfriends and I were at Little Otik in Kreuzberg, the restaurant run by a former Diner cook who moved to Berlin a few years ago and ran a supper club called Palisaden before "going legit", as he called it, and opening a proper restaurant. The look and feel of the restaurant is a little Berlinisch and a little New York-y, with wooden plank floors, simple tables, and almost unadorned walls. There's a cozy bar at the front of the room, and a small menu and mismatched plates add to the charm of the place. In the spirit of the times, the menu includes a list of local farmers, purveyors and vendors from whom the cooks source their meat and produce.

The nice thing about going out to dinner with women is that you can order a bunch of appetizers and sides without anyone across the table looking at you cockeyed. I am powerless in the face of pickles, so I ordered the pickle plate (which was nothing special, the vegetables were a little dry), a side of hashed Brussels sprouts with homemade bacon and caraway (so punchy and powerfully flavored that they could give the colatura-slicked, chilli-speckled ones at Franny's a run for their money), and a pile of mussels in a spicy, thyme-flecked broth (oh, to have been alone in that room, free to delicately guzzle the gutsy broth from the plate).The mussels were perfect: impeccably fresh and well-cooked with nary a closed one among them. They came with a little tower of fire-charred country bread for dunking.

(I apologize for the photos, I had nothing but my cell phone and, honestly, I will never get over feeling deeply awkward about photographing food in restaurants. I kind of hate myself every time I do it.)

Someone else ordered the wines, a nice Sancerre and the truly wonderful Hensel Aufwind. And we tried every single one of the desserts on the menu: a sharp little slice of puckery lemon tart, a sticky toffee pudding that was too dry for my taste, wonderfully boozy prune-Armagnac ice cream, a good milk chocolate pot de creme and my personal favorite, a plate of perfectly juicy slices of blood oranges and a few delicious dates, all drizzled with honey. I could have eaten the whole thing.

What I loved about the food at Little Otik was that it was approachable, simple fare prepared so deftly and well that if I lived any closer, I'd eat there every week (for the Brussels sprouts and blood oranges alone - and next time I'm ordering the deviled eggs to start instead of the pickles). It's not 4-star dining, but that's not the restaurant's aim. Elevated home cooking is an art form and I'm thrilled that someone in Berlin is doing such a good job at it. I can't wait to go back.

Little Otik
Graefestrasse 71
10967 Berlin
(030) 503 62 301