Berlin Eats Summer 2024 (Berlin, Germany)

Regional Dining Discussions Rest of Europe
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I love Hering Hausfrauenart! And I wish I’d had more opportunities to eat chanterelles. They’re really hard to come by here (unless you’re a forager, which I am not).

That’s a nice mish-mash of various regional German foods — the matjes being northern, the maultaschen southern. I’ll have to look up the place. A favorite sushi place is nearby, but I’ve never noticed Xantener Eck.

It’s rather shameful how little actual German food we eat when we’re in Berlin, save for Spargel and Pfifferlinge, since we’re always around for the season.

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Day 4 - Tuesday - major museums still closed, I decided to head off to Tempelhofer Feld for a morning of birdwatching, then walked down to meet up with Jim at Mardin , highly recommended by @linguafood for a Turkish lunch. Explaining, disappointingly daughter and SIL were on their way off to a break in Turkey, and he thence for sabbatical so they werent willing to go for any turkish or middle-eastern meals in Berlin. this excluded any real feasting at Mardin which would have been fun because this was wonderful, delicious chow. Loved the meze platter, with fine ezme, yogurt dips (especially the carrot and eggplant versions)

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loved the succulent adana kebab with yogurt though truthfully I think the yogurt was not needed given that we could have effectively used the mint version on our meze plate to make even a better dish (sorry it was almost gone before I took my pic)
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We had 10 pieces of the midye and truthfully the mussels were really fat and good but I thought the rice stuffingwas rather scant and underseasoned - that was a tiny disappointment.
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I have sent daughter and SIL off to try a mussel and rice dish in Istanbul which has absolutely beautiful spicing (I feel they may be using the same rice in this as in their stuffed mussels) - will post about this eventually on the Turday thread - hope they give it a try. All this with lovely ayran made for a great and re-vivifying meal. Afterwards we headed off to the Neue Museum (which was wonderfully restored from major war damage) to see their egyptian and other collections which are very fine. It piqued my interest in actually visiting Egypt, something I had not seriously considered before. BTY we bought some really excellent dark bread at a healthfood store in the Friedrichstrasse station - did not note down the brand or name however, which we enjoyed for the rest of our visit.

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83

I’m so happy that you liked Mardin. But you didn’t have their special adana kebab with chopped (vs. ground) lamb & pistachios?

Guess you’ll just have to come back & focus on the food. Looks like you covered most of the museums in this visit :wink:

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the steak was VERY tender and tasty. I didnt think the topping interfered but it did not add anything either! My husband and daughter both had fish which looked good but for some reason I did not ask for a bite - I was fairly shellshocked by my long travel day, museum visit and deathmarch through Mitte - on a very hot day. Nice place I think about 225E for 4 people with 2 courses, a couple of side dishes, 2 desserts, coffee and wine.

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85

My husband is particularly a museum lover. these days I tend more to lust for seeing new birds. Neither of us can eat as much as we used to. Sorry we missed the special adana kebab! I should have popped out your review again to refresh, but i am hardly sorry about the meal, which was really delicious. thanks for your inspiration!

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86

There are so many great Turkish places in Berlin (not surprisingly), but I understand your SIL wouldn’t be all that interested if he’s actually going to be in Turkey proper for a while.

What I love about Berlin is that you can “travel” to other places just by eating your way through the many international cuisines — regional Italian, Lebanese, Syrian, Israeli, Greek, Portuguese, Japanese, Thai, regional Chinese, Korean… and all so affordable, i.e. no 20% on top of everything.

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We got a sternlecture from the young folks about how much we should tip in Germany - at least 10% they said - but we never got any suggestion that we should tip when we were on our own and consequently we followed normal Euro practice and didnt. What is the real deal? In terms of cultural variation, it was also interesting that there was interaction with folks in the street about returnable bottles and a fairly lackadaisical recycling culture, rather different from farther south!

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88

Berliners are just as adamant about recycling (note the 3-5 different garbage cans everywhere), but as far as returnable bottles go, they are often left near garbage cans or elsewhere, bc some folks collect them to get the deposit. It’s a good system. We don’t have to feel like Don Draper leaving his picnic garbage behind, bc we know it will be picked up, and we can help someone less fortunate than we out.

Tipping is complicated. In fancier places, I probably do 10%, but med-low end round up plus a few Euros. My PIC still doesn’t understand how it all works :grin:

89

Day 4 - Wednesday, We decided on walking through the Grosser Tiergarten, followed by a return to the Gemaldegalerie, for a better look at their huge and amazing old master painting collection. I spent the morning enjoying the very birdy and beautifu park, Jim got bored and headed straight to the museum. At noon we broke the visit (headed back after lunch to see more) to find lunchnearby - slim pickings, we wound up at the Paulaner Wirthaus in Potsdamer Platz. Hideous architecture but decent bavarian food and of course beer - Jim had a pork schitzel with mushrooms gravy and fries (very good fries, actually) with his Helles, I had the german equivalent of mac and cheese with some sauteed spinach on top - it was actually very satisfying, with my grapefruit radler (Berlin folks seem to be fairly into radlers). This meal was nothing special but it hit the spot when our energy was flagging.

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90

Kässpätzle. I always thought the Sony Center and the NYC-esque hi-rise were the least offensive architectural choices at Postdamer Platz.

Most Berliners avoid the area. What a waste of space.

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LAST DAY (Thursday July 25) - we decided to explore our neighborhood for the morning and walked up to Schloss Charlottenberg (skipped the palace have seen too many of those) and walked around the (free) big park, partly maintained as a formal parterre, partly as a french or english woodland garden. On the way we stopped in at Museum Brohan, with its privately-accumulated art noveau and werkstatte collection which was interesting tho obviously not on the scale of the great applied art museum in Vienna. We were famished after the park and decided to head over to ROGACKI https://www.rogacki.de/ for a fish lunch. We did not know what form this would take but rapidly realized that the very popular stand up food counter in the back was the right option for us, where the counterman expertly weighed out our chosen portions of fried fish fillet, potato salad, herring/potato salad for me (somewhat redundant) and cucumber salad (using the tare feature on his scale to add each item on our plate as we selected)accompanied by glasses of a fresh fruiry white. Others in the resto stand up bar area were having oysters with champagne and other specialties and the fresh and prepared foods offered elsewhere all looked delicious. The fairly short daily hours (open too late to pick up a picnic to take on a trip, close too early for supper) testify to the success of this business Add my recommendation to those of others!

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After an afternoon at my insistence at the great, attractive and very popular Berlin Zoo (where we saw a lot but also were too tired and confused by the terrible map they offer to see it all) we met up with Daughter and SIL for a final dinner, at a Luxembourgeoise resto near our apartment. DE MAUFEL https://de-maufel.com/ won out by a nose over nearby Georgian-Israeli RESTAURANT SARA & GOGI, after we stopped in at De Maufel for our aperitivo, were charmed by the attitude of the hostess and the wine and did not want to move on. They offer a selection of Luxembourg wines which was attactive - the wines were perfect for a warm night, and their bread, red pepper spread, flammkuchen and house pate with wine jellly were excellent. We all had their coq au rieling with tarragon sauce or their fish and seafood marmite, and their creme brulee or seasional apricot parfait dessert and left satisfied. Somehow I left my phone at home so google and website will have to suffice to portray their cuisine which was very good but in the end less important than the very nice atmosphere which ended our visit on a high note. .

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92

you could be in any high rise development in the world here, but it felt very American. So disappointing to see all of these “talented architects” did such a terrible job in repurposing this blitzed space.

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93

I usually round up to the next even Euro, in the 8-12 percent range, in Germany and Austria. I consider that my trinkgeld amount. I would do the same in France and Italy.

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Neglected to add that on Day 5 we stopped in at a wonderful and eccentric wine bar recommended by our daughter, KURPFALZ WEINSTUBEN AM ADENAUERPLATZ, https://kurpfalz-weinstuben.de/ where we enjoyed three different wines (unfortunately we werent hungry so unwisely without food - I note that we were told that the items they serve are very good). the list of wines and the dishes served to accompany them change frequently - we selected off their daily wine list where in general the prices are about the same per glass (I think around 7E) and the portion size correlates with quality.

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As you would expect the wines all are described with their characteristics and classification. Husband picked one 2cl wine - mistakenly pointing at the sweeter wine of the two from a vineyard on the list - a choice he defended. I ordered two wines, a dry village wine and a glass of auslee from the pfalz. All of these wines were great but the auslese offered exactly the wonderful riesling hit I hoped for. Recommend this place if anyone is in the general area!!

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I adore Riesling (my favorite grape if not wine overall), and we always enjoy the variety available while in Germany. There’s a SIchuan place in Charlottenburg, whose owner has an impressive wine cellar, including a lot of vintages.

Sounds like you had a great time! Rogacki is always fun for a lunch break — so affordable (unless you go for the smoked fish counter), and great people watching.

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Im very fond of riesling too - it was my gateway wine back in the 70s when all the best wines were ridiculously affordable. It was lovely to try these

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97

I will entirely unexpectedly be in Berlin tomorrow (9/9), and I suppose much of 10 Sep.

If anyone here has suggestions for:

  • the cliché (kurrywurst)
  • the local? (what Berliners have been eating for centuries)
  • the supermarket (gotta take some fun stuff back across the pond, let’s say snacks, and something from the Fleischhauer)

It is an incredibly rushed trip (have to be in Frankfurt on the 11 Sep), but if anyone would want to meet for a beer, I’ve got time on the 9th … presuming Berlin places stay open late.

Danke!
FFF

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Where in Berlin are you staying? That would make suggestions a little easier.

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99

Berlin is at a crossroads, and it is a cosmopolitan city. The local food is more interesting and has more influences than you might realize. Berlin has always had newcomers, refugees, displaced people and immigrants arriving, just like Paris or Rome, so it’s overly simplistic to ask for recommendations for a Berlin specific food that has been eaten for centuries.

In terms of a regional specialty, I think of Königsberger Klopse, which originate further east, which are meatballs in a caper sauce, Eisbein which is Berlin style smoked pork hock/knuckle, and Buletten aka Boulette aka Frikadellen (big, flattened meat ball) .

Currywurst is spelled with a C because curry is a borrowed word.

Nante Eck offers Eisbein, Currywurst and Buletten, if you’re looking for old- fashioned regional dishes. I haven’t been, just pointing out one restaurant that offers all 3.

https://www.nh-hotels.com/en/travel-guides/berlin/food-in-berlin

@linguafood has covered the everything comprehensively, if you are looking for typical German Berlin foods, as well as the non German foods Berlin does well.

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Since public transportation will get you pretty much anywhere worth going within 30 min, here are a few recommendations:

A lot of places are closed on Mondays, so my beloved Henne is not going to happen for you, but if the skies clear early enough for Biergartenzeit (which they tend to do in Berlin… just in time for sunset :joy:), get thee to Prater, Cafe am Neuen See, Schleusenkrug, or Ankerklause — all popular with locals and tourists alike, and you can get a nice brat, good potato salad & a pickle at Prater.

For Currywurst, Curry 36 is one of the classic sausage slingers, as is Konnopke (I’ve not been, but Bourdain has :woman_shrugging:t3:). Konnopke is super-close to Prater, so you can do a lil sausage tasting if you feel so inclined.

You’ll find any number of Currybuden all over town, however. I wouldn’t sweat it if you grab one at a rando booth. It’s drunk food. Another very popular food is döner kebab, but being that you seem to have traveled Turkey excessively, I hesitate to recommend any Turkish food, even though it’s as Berlin as Eisbein at this point.

If you are into sweets I suppose you could get a Pfannkuchen, which is what Berliners (the donut confection) are known as in Berlin.

IF you are nearby, Rogacki is worth a lunch visit. Also easy to reach by subway.

Metzer Eck (same district as Konnopke and Prater) is one of the oldest Bierkneipen/Restaurants in Berlin.

As for supermarkets, the most famous of course is the food department at KaDeWe, but you’ll find German foods anywhere (REWE, Edeka, etc.). Not sure what you mean by “Fleischhauer?” A butcher?

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