Berlin on a Platter

Karlsbader at Czerr Bakery

First of all, please forgive the slightly dented look this Karslbader is sporting. I bought two last week, ate one right then and there on the sidewalk outside the bakery, flaky bits flying every which way, and then put the other in my bag before setting off on my way to Hugo's baby music class. I figured I'd have time to snap a shot of the Karlsbader later, but later turned out to be the next day, after I'd fished the bag out from under my wallet, a few of Hugo's toys, an empty milk bottle and some groceries. It looks a little worse for the wear here, so please imagine it slightly fluffed and puffed to get a good approximation of what it should look like when freshly purchased.

Second of all, if you don't already know about Czerr bakeries, consider this your hot tip. They are a family-owned small chain of bakeries found only in the greater Wilmersdorf-Friedenau-Schöneberg area. Their products are really solid and delicious (I'm partial to their Kosackenbrot, which makes fabulous whole wheaty toast, and their rustic rectangles of apricot cake, flavored with lavender or almonds) and it makes me feel good to support a family-owned, local bakery that doesn't import Brötchen from China or some similar nonsense.

But my main point is this: I'd forsake everything else Czerr makes to guarantee myself a lifetime supply of their Karlsbader. What, you've never heard of Karlsbader before? Well, I hadn't either until one morning shortly after I moved back to Berlin, I went to Czerr for some breakfast rolls, saw a croissant-type thing on the display shelf, was told it was a croissant made with bread dough instead of puff pastry, bought it, ate it and was smitten on the spot.

Fresh Karlsbader are crisp and flakey, but without any of the greasy fingers or leaden belly croissants can impart. They have that lovely minerally, yeasty tang of good bread dough, but are light as a feather, shattering all over the sidewalk or your plate, depending on where you eat them. I like to wodge a knife of orange marmalade inside of one and then eat it gingerly over my plate. I also like to eat them plain walking down the street. I think Karlsbader are an absolute treasure and one of the best reasons to prove why small independent bakeries must be kept alive by our patronage - if only to keep things like Karlsbader from disappearing from this earth. I've never seen them anywhere else.

Oh, and one last thing: if you want your own, you should head out early - Karlsbader are usually sold out by 11:00 am in the morning...

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

Tian Fu's Buffet Lunch

Do you know about the 5 euro lunch buffet at Tian Fu on Uhlandstrasse? Because if you don't, and you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night or at other, perhaps more appropriate times, dreaming desperately of the tongue-numbing, anise-like heat of the Sichuan peppercorn, not to mention the fire of a great Chinese chili, you should.

Wait, before I tell you about the lunch buffet, let's start at the beginning. Tian Fu. Uhlandstrasse. A real, honest-to-goodness Sichuanese restaurant in Berlin. Not as refined as some Sichuanese food I've had in New York, a little more sloppy and slapdash. But as hot and gutsy as you could long for, especially after one too many muted(emasculated?)-for-the-delicate-German-tastebud Asian meals.

Here, chili peppers abound. There are Sichuan peppercorns left, right and center. Do you ever need your meal to really hurt? This is where I go when that need strikes me.

(I don't love their soup-and-dumpling outpost on Berliner Strasse. The food they use there seems to be of inferior quality and their noodles, though advertised as handmade, aren't anything special.)

But back to the 5 euro lunch buffet. Every week day from 12:00 pm to 3:30 pm, they have this buffet set out. What you don't see in the photo below are two soups, hot & sour and a rotating one (this week it was some sort of egg drop), fried egg rolls and fried chicken, both of which I ignore (more on this in a second), boiled white rice, and a big bowl of shredded cabbage and carrots in vinegar.

My strategy: I start with a helping of hot & sour soup. It's nothing like the one I grew up eating at Chinese restaurants in Boston and New York, but it's hot hot hot and totally delicious (I have to sort of force myself not to get second helpings and I often fail miserably) in its own right. Then I ignore almost everything in the buffet cart. The noodles (up on the top right), the curry (on the top left) and the fried things I mentioned before that aren't in the picture - all of those I ignore. I tried the Chinese-style scrambled eggs with tomatoes on the bottom left once and they were fine, but I don't really need to go to a restaurant for those (thanks to Mark Bittman).

What I go for are the zucchini (next to the tomatoes and eggs), which are sliced on the bias and stir-fried with these great big dark red chilis, cut in half. The zucchini are sort of soft and sweet with a little kick of heat - delicious. I could eat a whole plate just of those. All the way on the far left bottom is another good one - it's little shreds of pork mixed with pieces of cabbage (I'm assuming it's Napa) and stir-fried with Sichuan peppercorns until everything is wilty and soft and very spicy and fragrant, with that wonderful numbing quality. Then, on the top, next to the curry that I've ignored, was a new dish to the buffet - more zucchini cut on the bias, but here they were mixed with chunks of faintly funky-tasting pressed tofu (be still my beating heart!) and shreds of fresh hot chiles that, once eaten, practically made my eyes water. I couldn't feel my inner cheek for a few minutes after eating one. Another dish of which I would have happily eaten an entire plate.

(Damn that second helping of soup!)

All the while, the restaurant plays awful Chinese-language soul music, which I sort of love because it reminds me of all those dirty little dives and markets I used to go to in Chinatown, and you might hear a waitress yelling at someone on the phone in Chinese interspersed with German in a pitch-perfect Berlin accent and there are framed black and white photos of rural China on the wall and my mouth is on fire (finally) and even though the food is oily as all get out, I don't care, because it tastes good and it is authentic, after all.

Which, if I'm honest, is what I really, truly crave. Well, besides a solid chili burn. I'm grateful to places like Tian Fu, few and far between in Berlin, that don't dumb down everything on their menu for the lowest common denominator. It allows me to hope that there might be some better-looking future for authentic ethnic dining in Berlin.

(I have a dream! That one day, Chinese restaurants in Berlin won't have to serve Thai For-Goodness-Sakes-Are-You-Kidding-Me curry!)

Aaaand now I'm starving. Good night!


Tian Fu
Uhlandstrasse 142
10179 Berlin
Tel: (030) 861 3015