After a highly successful & delicious culinary and historical tour of some of the bites n sites our favorite city has to offer (if only Bourdain’s handlers had contacted me instead of whoever wasted the first Berlin episode 
), we took a quick breather at our respective abodes.
Our friend arrived late afternoon from Amsterdam — just in time for a beer garden visit: Prater, of course. It was packed to the rafters given the summery temps, but we found a nice table for our group. Our HK friend enthusiastically chugged half of her beer, then practiced how to say “Eisbein ist lecker” and entertained random strangers with her newly found German knowledge & opinion 
.
I’d made a rez at a German tapas place we’d taken our Texan friend many moons ago, and whose current ratings indicated that it was still good. Can confirm!
We started off with a refreshing & seasonal strawberry sour (für mich),
a “super margarita” for my boo,
a negroni for our new arrival, and a nice house Riesling for the happy couple.
There was a bit of disappointment on the lady’s end that there sadly was no Eisbein on the menu, but everyone was very happy with the dishes we decided on, which covered many German regions. The greeting from the kitchen was a beet root shooter with pear & orange. Looks like beets are hip these days, as they seem to be on menus everywhere.
Our choices: a classic German cuke salad (very good)
Matjes with sour cream sauce, apples & onion (wonderful, tender, almost creamy herring)
Kassler with sauerkraut foam (hands down the best Kassler I’ve ever had — melt in your mouth tender)
Palatinate Saumagen with bacon kraut (excellent)
fish ‘fingers’ with dill, sour cream & lime (good)
Königsberger Klopse with creamy caper sauce & beetroot (my mom’s were better 
)
beetroot dumplings with smoked tofu, pears, and horseradish foam (I did not care for this at all)
as well as mashed potatoes (ok, mostly ordered to sop up some of the Klopse sauce)
and creamed kohlrabi on the side
— another dish/veg none of them had ever heard of before ( 
) — just in case all that wasn’t enough food.
Happily sated we made our way back to our kiez. Our buddy’s visit was brief, as he continued on to Italy for a conference today, and we’ll see how we can entertain our happy couple for the remainder of their stay. Lots to see & eat still, natch 
