Berlin on a Platter

Minh-Trang

A simple fact of life in Berlin is that finding a really good and authentic Vietnamese restaurant can be about as rare as a sunny day in winter. It's not that the days (restaurants) don't exist, but they're rare and precious. It's a little mysterious, what with Berlin's large Vietnamese community and all, but I've long learned not to get too worked up about these things. I accept my fate and resign myself to dreaming about the long lost buns and phos of my youth in New York and Massachusetts).

(N.b.: A recent trip to the Dong Xuan Center in Lichtenberg was balm for my hungry soul; we had a delicious meal there, but since we were in a group, we went for the family-style dishes, not the pho. Next time for sure.

And secondly, a commenter on Instagram gave me two restaurant tips for authentic Vietnamese food: Com Viet on Münzstrasse and Sen in the Viethaus on Leipziger Strasse. Have any of you tried them? What did you think?)

I kept hearing rumors that a Vietnamese restaurant on Kantstraße, Minh-Trang, harbored the best pho in Berlin. I didn't believe it for a long while, having been burned one too many times by pho broth that tasted like boiled onion water topped with gray curls of beef, by soup bowls slapped unceremoniously down in front of me without the traditional herb and bean sprout garnish, without the caddy of condiments that allow you to adjust the flavor of your pho just the way you like it. And from the outside, Minh-Trang looked like just like any of other depressingly mediocre and westernized Vietnamese restaurants in our fair city. I always passed it by. But yesterday I finally ventured inside Minh-Trang and lo, people were right and looks are deceiving, because the pho was good (for Berlin)!

The menu boasts several different kinds of pho, including at least four different ones with beef. I settled on a beef pho with charred ginger and onions. The broth was richly fragrant and deeply savory - the kind of thing you'd want to drink by the quart. Really, really good. The noodles were silky and plentiful. Sweet crescents of mild white onion and little rounds of sliced scallions floated in the broth. The plate of garnishes was fresh (though I would have liked basil and lime wedges) and the little caddy of condiments had everything we needed - fish sauce to dribble in the broth, hoisin sauce to dip the shreds of beef in and Sriracha (plus sliced chiles) to liven things up. The meat was the only real disappointment; it was just as gray and curly as everywhere else. I have yet to even see a pho in Berlin that has rare beef or brisket slices in the broth. Mystifying, but such is life in Berlin for an Asian-food lover. The rest of the soup was lovely. We dipped and slurped and drank and ate and it was delicious and satisfying. I'm thrilled that we live just a few short bus stops away.

(A bowl of beef pho at Minh-Trang costs €6.50. Thrillingly, the menu also boasts banh xeo, those delicious Vietnamese pancakes, but were out of them the night I was there.)

Minh-Trang
Kantstraße 67
Berlin 10627
Tel: (030) 318 01 117

Masala Dosai at Raamson

Not one but two Indian friends of mine have told me about Raamson in the past few months. It's a little Tamil restaurant on Kolonnenstrasse, right before you get to Julius-Leber-Brücke. (You Kreuzbergers may already be acquainted with Raamson's grocery store on Gneisenaustrasse, which apparently now also boasts a selection of takeaway food.) Naturally, I was intrigued, as really good South Asian food continues to be maddeningly elusive in our fair city.

We stopped by there a few Saturdays ago, just when they were opening up at midday. We'd clearly caught them off guard as it took nearly an hour to be served and we were the only customers in the joint, but maybe they do more of a weekday business? It didn't really matter, though - Hugo was napping and we were content to just sit there in companiable if stupefied silence (our son's early waking hours continue to throw us for a loop) until our food came.

The reason I was game to try Raamson is because they serve specialties from southern India. I adore thin, crisp dosa rolled around savory potato fillings, fresh coconut chutney, fiery sambar, steamed iddlies. (Ohhh, Madras Mahal, I miss you!) At Raamson, I ordered the standard dosa filled with spiced potatoes, which came with fresh coconut chutney and what I assume was their version of sambar (it was much thicker and less spicy than I expected - maybe it was something else)? The chutney was really great. And the dosa crêpe was nice enough, but the filling was a little wan - dumbed-down, it seemed, for the customers in Berlin. As usual. The dosa and chutney were good enough to scratch the itch I had and I'd certainly go back again if I didn't have to wait as long next time and Max thought his dish (something with chicken, I think) was good and Hugo plowed through almost an entire serving bowl of rice, but after we left, I do admit to once again feeling the need to howl up to the heavens the following questions:

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND RELIABLY GOOD INDIAN FOOD IN BERLIN? WHY IS IT NEVER EVER SPICY ENOUGH? AND WHO IS GOING TO FINALLY WAKE UP, TAP INTO THIS MARKET AND OPEN A GREAT INDIAN RESTAURANT HERE?

Until then, I'll keep cooking Indian food at home, of course. But I'm keeping the hope alive, folks. So feel free to leave me your tips below, in case you think I'm dead wrong and there's a great Indian place around the corner from you. (If, however, you have never eaten Indian food in either the UK or New York or suburban Boston, ahem, keep in mind that I may strongly disagree with you on what makes for good Indian food.)

Raamson
Kolonnenstraße 48/49
10829 Berlin
Tel: (030) 919 07 550

Thai Noodle Soup at Preussenpark

This is neither here nor there since it's January and I don't think anyone even goes to the Thaiwiese in Preußen Park in January, but I found this photo the other day while cleaning up my computer and it jogged my memory and I thought it best to share it with you before it gets lost in another rat's nest here.

What you're looking at right there is a bowl of Thai pork noodle soup, eaten last fall on a very blustery day. Hugo was asleep in his stroller and my mother and Max and I were having lunch sur l'herbe and it was lovely, as usual. We've been there several times now and have sampled our way through quite a few stands. The whole fried fish with chili sauce is incendiary, delicious and slightly stomach-rumpling. The papaya salads are lovely, the crosshatched mangoes with chili salt (if you can find them) a very nice dessert indeed. But on this particular day, I found my favorite thing that the Thaiwiese has to offer and that would be this noodle soup.

Now there aren't that many people selling noodle soup there. In fact, I have a feeling the vendor we bought from might be the only noodle soup vendor? The only one I've ever seen, in any case. There are two choices, beef or pork, and watching the soup get made is almost as good as eating the soup. The raw meat is delicately plucked from its metal container and cooked in searingly hot broth while little pork or beef balls wait their turn. Softened noodles are placed in a serving bowl and then the cooked meat and balls and broth (the broth!!) are ladled on top.

The broth is a work of art - full of punchy, clear, meaty flavor that isn't muddied at all. The noodles are delectably chewy while the meat is tender and flavorful. There are all kinds of condiments you can add to your bowl, but the soup is perfect as is - I wouldn't change a thing. This is street food of the very best kind.

Thaiwiese im Preußenpark
between Fehrbelliner and Konstanzer Straße U-Bahn stops
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf

La Soupe Populaire at Bötzow Berlin

The former brewery Bötzow Berlin, on the border of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, lay fallow for 20 years before being purchased, in 2010, by Dr. Hans Georg Näder, the owner of Ottobock, a prosthetics manufacturing company. Dr. Näder plans a grand transformation of the sprawling complex, with space planned for a scientific research campus, art galleries, stores, offices and even a hotel.

The first inhabitants of the space are a team of cooks under Tim Raue who send out their high-end take on classic Berlin comfort food (Königsberger Klopse, Brathering, Sülze) from Thursday to Saturday every week at dinner as well as at lunchtime. The restaurant, called La Soupe Populaire, is located in a part of the brewery called the Atelierhaus. Each month, a new installation of art graces the gritty walls (this month, Andreas Gursky) and the cooks come up with special menus to pair with the changing pieces. But the regular menu holds fast.

The location is a distinctly weird place - cavernous and dark and spooky, you find yourself not really wanting to walk through the echoing hallways by yourself. But, improbably, a cozy, warm restaurant has successfully been crafted within the slightly forbidding walls of Bötzow Berlin. Mismatched china for bread dishes and cheerful, floral seat cushions mingle with the austere elegance of KPM Urbino porcelain plates. The charming, convivial atmosphere softens the harshness of the exposed pipes and brick.

Michael Jaeger, the chef de cuisine, sends out well-crafted German comfort food from a kitchen that clearly has a twinkle in its eye as well as serious cooking chops. Senfei, that old cafeteria classic of boiled eggs in mustard sauce, has been reimagined as a soft-cooked poached egg quivering on top of a silky mustard sauce. There are crisp homemade potato chips for some textural contrast and a bit of char caviar on top but to cut through the unctuous richness of it all, a layer of cool cubes of sour beet salad is hidden at the bottom of the bowl.

Another evening that I was there, I had the pleasure of eating a slice of Spanferkelsülze (not pictured) with a bit of sweet mustardy pickle alongside as an appetizer. Sülze (aspic) certainly has had its image challenges along the way, but Jaeger's take - the meat tender and savory, the aspic just barely there, and coins of spicy carrots studding each slice - gives this tired old dish a much-deserved new life.

Mains include this dish of nicely cooked cod served with Schmorgurken and a creamy, bright green tarragon sauce. I'm not sure I'll ever love Schmorgurken, but given the Soupe Populaire treatment, it's hard not to like them. And besides, it's wonderful to see a restaurant concept adhered to so rigorously and so successfully. Oma's Berliner Küche never had as good an ambassador as La Soupe Populaire.

Königsberger Klopse, served with shreds of sweet-sour beets and buttery puréed potatoes are clearly the kitchen's pride and joy. They are rich and porky, capped with a few crunchy breadcrumbs and just a bit too salty for my taste.

The wines on the menu are almost entirely German and quite excellent in addition to being good value. I'm particularly partial to the Dreissigacker bottles.

The first night I was at La Soupe Populaire, dessert was a modernist take on Bienenstich - two layers of plain yellow cake filled with cream, apricot ice cream and topped with a crunchy disc of caramelized almonds. Though I loved the attempt at reimagining this old stalwart, I found the cake a flavorless disappointment and the other elements, while delicious, couldn't redeem it.

But the second time I went, dessert was a raging success: a scoop of lusty cherry sorbet atop a silky poppyseed mousse with little cubes of toasted brioche scattered throughout. I scraped my bowl clean and realized I loved this version even more than the original, ribsticking dessert. Which is how it should be.

La Soupe Populaire is a lovely addition to Berlin's restaurant scene and I've already recommended it to many people. Go if you're a tourist, go if you're a longtime resident - it holds something for both, an introduction to Berlin as well as a reminder of how fun, creative and wonderful this city can be. I'll brave the scary halls of Bötzow anytime to go back.

PS: A nice little bonus: there's free parking on the grounds.

La Soupe Populaire
Bötzow Berlin - Atelierhaus
Prenzlauer Allee 242
10405 Berlin
Tel: (030) 44 319 680

Samakki Talad Thai

On a slightly desolate stretch of the already charmless Kaiser-Friedrich Strasse, there is a Thai restaurant that I've driven by, oh, let's say hundreds of times. Although it's quite close to where we live, we never go past there on foot and somehow it's never occurred to me to stop in. When I pass it, I'm usually in the car and in a hurry to get where I'm going: doctor's office, my mother's place, the gym, errand-running.

But on Sunday we were on our way to Tiergarten to let Hugo practice walking (he wants nothing more these days than to push his stroller around until he's glassy-eyed and catatonic) and Max was hungry. He wanted to grab something quick. I rattled off the usual suspects, but nothing piqued his interest. Just then we drove past Samakki Talad Thai. "Let me run in there," he said. "I'll grab something to go." I double-parked, he ran in and a few minutes later emerged with a takeaway pot of steamed rice and chicken red curry in a knotted plastic bag. I kept expecting to see a goldfish swim up to the surface.

It was pretty delicious stuff and seriously spicy. Far more so than what I was used to. Max paid €5 for the meal and kept raving about what he'd seen inside the restaurant - chafing dishes set out with lots of interesting looking things, all the cooks speaking Thai. He was sure they were regulars at the Thai Park.

So yesterday, I went to have lunch there myself.

The place is pretty bare bones and ordering is a little confusing. There's a counter with the aforementioned chafing dishes and a few platters of fried things, a second counter with fresh vegetables laid out (the salad counter?), plus a third counter in the back that I didn't even dare approach. There's also a man (the owner?) who simply came up to me while I looked at the offerings and asked me what I wanted. I ordered a Thai fish cake and a papaya salad. "Scharf oder nicht scharf?" came the question, so of course I said "scharf". I only started getting nervous when it was repeated back to me incredulously two more times, as if to say, are you sure, you wimpy-looking lady?

The fish cake (served cold) came doused in Thai chili sauce and was...sort of chewy. I couldn't really discern the fish, but eaten with the cooling cucumbers it was nice enough.

Then came the papaya salad. And holy capsaicin, it was really, really, really spicy. It was also delicious. It hurt so bad! And tasted so good. Best of all, I got to see the cook pounding the ingredients for it together behind the counter while I waited. Somehow I managed to eat the entire thing (my method was to save the tomatoes for whenever I felt I couldn't go on anymore) and then, incredibly, was sad that it was gone. I'd say it was one of the best papaya salads I'd ever eaten.

At that point, I was full enough. But my curiousity was bigger. In the meantime, other customers had come in and ordered hot meals and everything smelled so good. So I went back to the counter and asked for a plate of ground pork and peppers spiked with chiles (there are no labels on anything, so I don't know the name for this dish, but I think it was Pad Krapow Moo - see here and here). I was warned that it was going to be spicy, but I'd survived the papaya salad, hadn't I? Nothing was going to stop me now. The ground pork was piled on top of a big plate of white rice.

And it was just fantastic. Spicy, indeed, but the rice helped me out there, and also faintly sweet and savory and saucy and aromatic (holy basil completes me) and addictively good. (Though I still only managed half of the plate and took the rest home for dinner.) It tasted like home cooking heaven.

Every dish is €5 at lunch. (The fish cake was another euro.) It's definitely going to be my new canteen.

Samakki Talad Thai
Kaiser-Friedrich Strasse 41
10627 Berlin

Pide at Özge Grill

For a long time, I didn't want to tell a single soul about Özge Grill, a little hole-in-the-wall Turkish spot around the corner from our apartment. I wanted it to stay my little secret. At first glance, it looks like every other Dönerbude in the city. The second glance, however, might tip you off - there's a wood-burning oven at the back. The cooks use it to make small rounds of bread that they serve with any of the meat platters and other dishes, pizza (which looks awful and is only ever ordered by Germans who come in and ignore the rest of the menu, infuriating me) and pide - long, hand-stretched slippers of dough filled with feta and spinach (my favorite) or ground meat.

To say that the feta-spinach pide is worth a trip across town no matter where you live would not be overstating it. This is seriously delicious stuff. The casing blisters and crackles in the heat of the oven and the crumbles of feta melt and yield. I sprinkle it liberally with the hot Turkish pepper placed on each table, but you could leave that off if you wanted something milder. It's my very favorite cheap lunch and it never fails to deliver.

In addition, if you're lucky, in the glass case holding the raw meats that they grill and serve with rice and salad, there are usually a few earthenware dishes of soft, stewed vegetables (eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, peppers). The stew is fabulous - clearly home-made and especially delicious when eaten with some of the bread, hot from the oven.

Özge Grill feels like my special little secret, but it's time to share.

Özge Grill
Nehringstrasse 4
14059 Berlin
Tel: (030) 326 03 665

Lon-Men's Noodle House

The first time I went to Lon-Men's Noodle House on Kantstrasse, I was in the throes of homesickness for New York. The cheap, hot, dingy, cramped little restaurant was the closest thing on Kantstrasse to what I was pining for and it was a relief to sit down at a slightly sticky table, get a mug of hot tea and eat from thick plastic bowls while watching the cooks bang thin metal pots and noodle strainers around in the open kitchen.

The restaurant specializes in Taiwanese noodle soups (which are fine, but nothing transcendent) and the fairly edited menu only has a few other things on the menu (pretty good fried dumplings, a bit of dim sum, a small selection of cold appetizers - of which the thinly sliced marinated beef stands out). There are also gua bao, those little wraps made famous by David Chang at Momofuku, and blogged about here. (I'm partial to the duck version.)

But the other day, I was surprised to see a man sitting next to me eating a dish full of steamed dumplings in chile sauce, something I knew wasn't on the menu. (I, er, know it practically by heart.) I leaned over to ask him and he told me that these were off-the-menu dumplings, to be ordered at the counter. Apparently there are usually a few daily specials tacked up there that I'd never noticed before. Go figure! Of course, I ordered a bowl for myself straight away. They were delicious - just right. Hot and chewy and salty and spicy.

Lon Men's Noodle House
Kantstrasse 33
10625 Berlin
Tel: (030) 315 19 678

Casalot

On Mother's Day morning, my husband and I were trying to think of a place to go for brunch. We didn't feel like going to our usual haunts and were stumped on what to try. "I know," he said. "Search for an Arab restaurant serving brunch."

So I, uh, did just that: googled "Arab restaurant", "brunch" and "Berlin". The first result that popped up was Casalot, in Mitte, just around the corner from Friedrichstrasse. Whatever, I thought to myself. This is going to end badly. Who googles what I did and actually gets a winner?

Last laugh is on me, because, oh my goodness, Casalot was a total revelation.

It's a pretty spacious place, with both indoor and outdoor seating. When we arrived, the seats outdoors were all empty. Gah, I thought, figuring this was proof that we'd made a bad choice. But inside, the tables were packed. We got the last table (that we had reserved, which I recommend you do, too).

The buffet was set up in the front room where the bar is. There was a long table filled with big platters of cold salads, a table of hot chafing dishes and a dessert table. The selection of cold salads alone was wonderful - there were the usual suspects like hummus, labneh and baba ghannoush, but also many other things like fennel and tomato salad, a cooked tomato salad that was spicy and bright, flash-fried vegetable salad, artichokes, olives, and on and on. As our meal progressed, I realized that cooks were bringing out new salads to the serving table all the time, not just replenishing what was already there. Everything was impeccably fresh and perfectly seasoned. This was really, really good food. (The price per head is €12,90, which is a lot more than other Berlin brunch spots, but the excellent food more than justifies the cost.)

After we'd eaten our fill of the cold salads, we moved on to the chafing dishes, which held, among other things, lovely little mint-flecked lamb meatballs and roast chicken that was incredibly moist and flavorful. (Actually, I'm not really sure how it was prepared - but it was out-of-this-world. Even Hugo couldn't stop eating it).

The dessert table was full of fruit and little Arab pastries - date-stuffed, sesame-studded, rose-water flavored, you get the drill. I can't speak to any of those, because of this, but honestly, at that point, dessert would have been too much for me anyway. (Actually, that reminds me that although I didn't eat any of the bread, it looked sort of average - they're not making their own, as far as I can tell, which is a shame since the food is so good. But there you have it.)

On one run to the buffet, I ran into a chef sliding a new platter on the table, so I told him how delicious everything was and I asked him what kind of Arab restaurant Casalot is. My father and Max and I had spent the entire lunch wondering if the cooks were Moroccans or Lebanese or Tunisians or Palestinians or what. And actually, it turns out that we were all right. The chef told me that Casalot is the old Roman name for the Palestinian town his boss is from. But the cooks are from all over the place: Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon, among many other places.

There are a lot of cooks in Casalot's kitchen and thank goodness for that, because what they're doing is delicious. I can't wait to go back.

Casalot
Claire-Waldoff-Strasse 5
10117 Berlin
(030) 275 72 210

Coledampf's & Companies im Aufbau Haus

I've been meaning to tell you about the amazing lunch I had a few months ago at Coledampf's in the Aufbau Haus in Kreuzberg. The restaurant is just beyond a little café area at the front of the house. It's all industrial-chic and so forth, with mismatched chairs, long tables, an open kitchen and a gleaming array of pots and pans arranged for sale around the dining tables. (But I was sorry to see that the amazing selection of cookbooks that once were housed in the store have been greatly reduced to just one little corner.)

The menu is pretty short, or tightly edited as we now say. Which is just fine by me - I like having only a few things to choose from. I was there during the end weeks of our dreadful winter and it was still pretty cold out, so I ordered the springiest sounding thing on the menu: two kinds of fish with peas, radishes and a risotto made with barley instead of risotto and flavored with Bärlauch.

When the food was delivered to our table, the colors just jumped right off the plate: that gorgeous saffron-yellow broth, the verdant green of the pees and microgreens (just the right amount, too) and the dewy pinkiness of the braised radishes. It was almost too pretty to eat. And such balm for this sun-starved soul!

Luckily, the food was even better than it looked. Not only was the fish perfectly cooked (not such an easy thing to find this town!), but the barley-otto was amazing - it had a tiny bit of bite still, but was just the right amount of creamy. I am not a huge fan of the Bärlauch (or ramp) craze, but here it was delicious - giving the fine pile of creamy barley just a hint of a nice wild taste. The peas were sweet and tiny and I almost got up the nerve to ask the chef where they buy them, because I miss petite peas very much, but I was too much of a chicken.

It is a testament to the deliciousness of the meal that, when I finished, I put down my cutlery and wished the meal had been just a little bit bigger. The service was pretty good and I left feeling very happy and grateful that such places are finding their place in Berlin. And that I'm finding time now and then to discover them for myself, too.

Coledampf's & Companies

Prinzenstrasse 85 D

10969 Berlin (Kreuzberg)
(030) 221 96 095

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