@moderators - instead of removing the Thai Aroma tag, you added the address.
Could you please remove the ENTIRE TAG bc as I had mentioned in my first plea, there will be several more restaurants in this thread.
Thanks so much 
Steak frites at our favorite lil French bistro, Les Valseuses.
The menu is pretty small: 3 entrées that are always available – namely escargots, duck rillettes, and beef tartare, plus usually one entrée special & two main specials.
The rillettes is better shared between more than two peeps, so we opted for one of the specials – grilled mackerel filet with capers, dill-fennel salad & a lovely remoulade. The fish was cooked perfectly.
Always on the menu, however, is steak frites. You can choose between the traditional entrecôte or filet, and your choice of green peppercorn, tarragon butter, or blue cheese sauce.
We got the entrecôte perfectly MR & the filet perfectly rare, green peppercorn sauce pour moi, tarragon butter for my PIC. The frites are fried in duck fat and are pure perfection: hot, crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside. They also stayed crispy until we were basically done with our meat orgy. A salad with a tangy mustard vinaigrette complements the meal, and the Gris de Grenache went well with all the things
This place has been around for at least a decade, and it’s easy to understand why.
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If we ever get to Berlin again . . .
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Here’s hoping!
When in Berlin, eat more of the foods you can’t get at home. More Georgian food for brunch/lunch at the place we were too lazy to discover a few days ago, but happened to be in the nabe today. The badrijani was better than what we had at Tsomi.
Bougatsa for an afternoon coffee treat from Bekarei, a Greek/Portuguese patisserie and bakery near us.
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Met up with friends at the 10th anniversary of Bite Club, a local street food event yesterday. It was pretty busy, but we got there early like good middle-aged peeps will, and so the lines weren’t terrible just yet. We immediately spotted an Argentinian booth where we grabbed a bbq platter: rib-eye, chorizo, sirloin, tater, chimichurri, grilled tomato, sauce. Seemed like a good start. Was.
Our friends’ daughter is vegetarian and grabbed a jian bing with mushrooms that she liked a lot,
our friend and her boo got some Pakistani stuff I didn’t photograph and forgot what it was. We were hoping to get a buttermilk fried chicken burger or pan-fried dumplings as our second course, but both booths had lines around the block, whereas an Indian booth offering dosas was practically deserted. Unrightfully so, as the dosa with tandoori chicken ordered EXTRA spicy was a flavor party in our mouths.
Felt like soaking up some of the beer consumed & swung by our favorite “pizza” place where we shared a chanterelle slice.
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At the risk of repeating myself, we went back to our favorite pizza place last night, a very low-key trattoria run by Neapolitan punks. It was the perfect meal to soak up too many beers with friends
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Tried a new, fancy Japanese “brasserie” in our hood, mostly bc the place we wanted to visit was ready to close. A very late dinner of hamachi & toro nigiri, beef tataki, salmon carpaccio, and crispy oyster mushrooms. Outstanding service & very good fish.
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Food looks wonderful, thank you for sharing. Be careful though…from the Wash. Post!
German police search for a lion suspected to be on the loose on the edge of Berlin
Yeah, way out in the outskirts. I think we’re safe where we are 
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That looks so good!!
The quality level of the fish was outstanding. As it should be, given the price tag!
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Absolutely delish, melt-in-yo-mouth spinach & cheese khinkali at one of the Georgian places we returned to with a friend. They came with a yogurt dipping sauce and a somewhat sweet vinegar (pomegranate?). We also split the “balls & pickles” plate, which consisted of 5 different ‘salati:’ broccoli, spinach, beets, string bean, carrot & wonderful dill pickles. I could eat an entire plate of those pickles, whereas we thought the salati were better at the other Georgian place closer to us (although TBH I’m just happy about the fact that there is more than one Georgian restaurant available to us), and I would love to return to try their other khinkali, and maybe have some room for that fab looking walnut honey cake, which again we didn’t get to taste.
The khachapuri was nice, but my PIC also prefers the one at Tsomi.
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My bestie was in town for a couple of days on a surprise work trip <3
She wanted food she can’t get in Portsmouth, so dinner last night was at a German brewpub/restaurant that offers a 3-course prix fixe for 30 € and generally has an eclectic selection of appetizers, salads, pasta dishes and assorted mains.
We tried the Silver (a very good pilsner-style beer), and my PIC and my bestie got the prix fixe – gazpacho, Wiener Schnitz with potato salad, and a dessert plate with fresh strawberries; I got a whipped feta appetizer with salad and grilled veg, followed by pappardelle with chanterelles.
The gazpacho wasn’t all that great, tasted more like cold tomato sauce, but the schnitz was one of the better renditions we’ve had in town – crispy, flavorful panade, and a veal cutlet that was maybe just a little too thick for a true Wiener. The potato salad was unfortunately a tad undercooked 
The pappardelle were nice, but I would’ve done a far better job myself for less money. The dessert plate consisted of very good chocolate mousse and fresh strawberries.
Meeting up with a fellow academic at the French bistro tonight. I see steak frites in our future…
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Did I say I don’t patronize chains? Well, I’ll gladly make an exception for Sticks n Sushi, a chain based in Kopenhagen with branches in London & Berlin. We’d dined at another location in town before, but chose a newly opened branch near our hood for a belated anniversary dinner.
We were greeted with two glasses of bublé on the house, after which we continued with a Yuzu Zoo (gin, umeshu, yuzu, lemon bitter) for him, and a Shojito (shochu, blackberry, lime) for me – loved both of them 
We split the Sushi Sister – a variety of sashimi & ceviche dishes, almost all of them successful. They sadly ruined very good quality yellowtail with truffle oil, which overpowered the fish & all the other elements of the dish. Meh.
We also ordered a side of rice with spicy sauce & the cold spinach with soy sesame and goma dressing. The spinach was so good we got another order.
Went to a favorite gin bar in walking distance, Botanical Affairs where we were hoping to have a drink or two. There were two tables seated outside, nobody inside. The bartender was busy chatting with her friend and presumably making drinks for the table(s) outside. We’ll never know, bc after 10 minutes of being ignored completely, we got up and left.
Enjoyed an absolutely fabulous martini my PIC made us back home instead <3
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We were kinda stumped about where to dine tonight, so we took the lazy route and revisited Lao Xiang, the dim sum just around the corner from us. Out of 3 dishes ordered, only one (double-cooked pork that was supposed to be spicy) was a major disappointment. It was lightly battered and in a brown sauce that was very reminiscent of the Chinese food I grew up with - Germanized and not very interesting, and also the only dish that showed up at first. I will say the place was hopping, and there was exactly one poor waiter doing all the work.
Eventually, the water spinach we’d ordered again showed up, and it was just as good as the first/last time we went. The absolute star of the evening - perhaps not surprisingly, was the har gow. While they look like every other har gow we’ve had, these were spectacular: the filling was incredibly flavorful, but the skin was the silkiest, most tender texture either of us have ever had. Honestly could’ve made an entire meal just with these 
Lesson learned. We’ll go back for a proper dim sum meal before we leave town.
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Truffles are great. Truffle oil is a killer.
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Look like great pies. But what’s that filmy stuff on the top in the first pic?
Neapolitan is definitely my favorite pizza style and so hard to find done right in my USA Midwest. I need to travel 30 miles to the ONE place closer than Chicago to find it.
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Filmy stuff? Do you mean the prosciutto di Parma slices?
