Archive for the ‘Places to eat’ Category

Glühwein & Bratwurst: Hit Those Christmas Markets in Berlin

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Good Food in Berlin will be joining forces with Berlin ♥ ’s You to bring you Berlin food that you will love! Today we hit the beloved and infamous Weihnachtsmärkte of Berlin.
Christmas in Berlin

I love Christmas and I adore Christmas in Berlin. No other country in the world does Christmas so well as Germany, with their ever-present Weihnachtsmärkte most German cities, towns and villages. Shops, stores and companies go all out for the Christmas season and decorate their displays, windows and even toilets in a cosy Christmas theme. Visiting a Weihnachtsmarkt is a fabulous way to really be engulfed in pure Christmas atmosphere and to shop for nice holiday presents for your loved ones (or yourself).

Germans like to visit Christmas markets too. Many working people like to pop out during their lunchbreak for a Bratwurst from the Weihnachtsmarkt, or they sneakily nibble on some sweetly fried dough (Mutzenmandel). Even when the temperatures drop below the -10, you will still see many stubborn Germans relaxing with a currywurst and Glühwein on a Christmasmarket. You may freeze your hands off, but that is all part of its charm. The Weihnachtsmärkte are my personal favourite when it comes to the season of jolly and holly. And that is why I will sum up some of the best, coolest and most ‘special’ ones ready for you to be visited. (more…)

The Best Sushi in Neukölln

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Good Food in Berlin will be joining forces with Berlin ♥ ‘s You to bring you Berlin food that you will love! On today’s menu: scrumptious sushi.

I am one of the biggest sushi fans that I know. I could seriously and passionately eat sushi every day. And in Berlin, there are quite a few restaurants that I refer to as ‘the best’ or ‘the most fabulous’, as there simply is a lot of great sushi going around in Berlin. And today, I would like to point out a fantastic producer of sushi in Germany’s capital. Steel Shark is a small mini-chain of sushi shops with two locations in Berlin. One of them you find in the popular tourist hot spot the Nikolai Viertel – a couple of small streets with nice historical atmosphere and shops –  walking distance from the Alexanderplatz with its Fernsehturm. The second location is on the busy Karl Marx Straße in Neukölln. Both restaurants are tiny, small shops where you can sit yourself down or order take-away sushi from.

budget sushi neukölln

Mango, rucola and salmon inside-outs @ Steel Shark

Unbelievably Cheap Sushi (more…)

Spanish Tapas at Sol y Sombra in Kreuzberg

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Good Food in Berlin will be joining forces with Berlin ♥ ‘s You to bring you Berlin food that you will love!

Tapas in Kreuzberg: Fingering Flavoursome Food

On the Oranienplatz, directly on the lively and very cool Oranienstraße in Kreuzberg and only a stone’s throw away from the Kottbusser Tor, one finds a couple of very pretty restaurants. They seem a bit more posh and up-scale than many of the small eateries you can see on the Oranienstraße. And one of these restraurants is Sol y Sombra. Last winter, while wading through inches of thick snow, I stumbled into this small restaurant. The atmosphere is very candle light-y, the decoration is quaintly Mediterrean and the food basically revolves around tapas. Sure, you can order a main dish and be particularly lazy, but that would just be silly.

So of course, we too, ordered tapas. When you go to Sol y Sombra around dinner time, you will most likely have to spend a bit of time lounging at the bar with a nice glas of wine – or a Spanish beer to wait for a table. Never a hassle when it’s only two people. And when ordering tapas, you also have the joined fun of picking and matching your food. We actually made a proper list on a coaster while sipping drinks at the bar. By the time our food (no less than eight different tapa dishes) came, our table was ready.

When it comes to tapas, I am a big fat slutty fan of the dates or prunes with a layer of bacon (crispily baked, of course). Such a slut, that we actually ordered the dish twice. The classical flavour combination of crunchy and spicy bacon with the soft sweet texture of a prune is something almost magical. But when one is eating tapas, you will not feel too bad about ordering a ‘naughty’ dish, considering you only get a small plateful of it. To supplement my slutty prune craving, we also had gamba’s, green peppers, chorizo, calamares, spicy meatballs and Spanish tortilla (also one of my favourites – a thick eggy pancake with potatoes).

(more…)

Transit: A New Kid On The Block

Friday, November 6th, 2009

IMG_1893

Just tried out another Asian place here in Mitte. It`s great. Lots of variety. Try the homemade beef noodles! The noodles with pork a very asian and a bit sour – not bad but very asian! All the other little goodies are great!

So check it out its open till 1am an you find  the Transit area on Rosenthalerstr. 68!

IMG_1892

A Magica: more Berlin Pizza!

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

100_1510

When it comes to pizza you are very well served in Berlin. However there are only a view places with goood pizza, good service and a good location. Most of the time at least one of them sucks. 

If you are around Prenzlauer Berg you should consider checking out A Magica

Greifenhagener Str. 5410437 Berlin
030 22808290

It`s small, it`s cute, it`s warm inside and it has nice staff! 

100_1511

The Bird – New York style Hamburgers in Berlin – YES!

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

cimg2205

Ok – this one was tough. Whoever has eaten one of those juicy american hamburgers won`t forget them for a long time and probably won`t find them outside the US. This is what I thought when I got to Berlin. Well luckily there is a place – a little american heaven called “The Bird“. On weekends its best if you get a reservation and bring some extra money since the quality is excellent and the Burgers are f****** huge! 

THE BIRD
Am Falkplatz 5
Prenzlauerberg 
10435 Berlin

030 5105 3283 

Opening Hours
Mon to Sat 6pm -late
Sun 12pm – late

Pasta Presti – Friedrichshain's best noodles

Thursday, November 6th, 2008
Paprika pasta with eggplant, green onions, and coconut curry sauce - yum!

Paprika pasta with eggplant, green onions, and coconut curry sauce - yum!

Fresh, organic, ridiculously delicious and highly unconventional, Pasta Presti, a small cafe and restaurant tucked away in Friedrichshain, is one of Berlin’s little culinary secrets. Fresh, house-made pastas are served with an assortment of sauces which change daily; ranging from the classic pomodoro, to more modern coconut-lemon-curry-fig concoctions. The flavor combinations may at times seem a little off the wall, experimental even, but they do not disappoint. 

 

Pasta Presti’s cosy, unpretentious atmosphere, friendly staff, and comfy seating make it the perfect place to curl up with a plate of linguini and a cappuccino on a cold day.

 

Vegan cream of pumpkin soup

Vegan cream of pumpkin soup... mmmm.

You can find Pasta Presti at Wühlischstraße 39a in F’hain, not far from Boxhagener Platz. More info and reviews can be found here.

Chi Sing Berlin Vietnamese Food with a twist

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Ever wondered why there are so many Vietnamese people in Berlin and especially East-Berlin?
Yes, back in the days the communist goverments of Vietnam and East-Germany had a pretty heavy exchange of “human resources” and some or actually a lot stayed. This is why we have a quite authentic vietnamese culture going on here in East-Berlin. Lots of vietnamese restaurants and lots of convinience stores run by vietnamese families where you will find a lot of authentic parts of vetnamese culture.

Recently Chi Sing opened in Rosenthaler Str. 63 in Mitte. Very nice atmosphere, great service and a little pricy for the small budget but worth every penny for a journey into excellent taste. More vietnamese places will be covered here shortly!

Good Pizza in West Berlin "Pizza Factory"

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Ok ok we kind of write a lot of things going on in Eastberlin however there is a lot or maybe even more going on in the west as well. So why dont we start of with a cute little down to earth fair priced original pizza place called “Pizza Factory”. Just get off at Bahnhof Zoo walk down the Kurfürstendamm and then … well find the adress yourself you will see it on the picture below!

Heavenly dinner, heavenly skies

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Yesterday evening, Berlin was a place just a stone’s throw away from Oahu, Hawaii – at least as far as the spectacular sunset was concerned. When you looked up from street level, you saw people staring at the sky in amazement from their 3rd-floor balconies. Me, I stared up in amazement from a small boat taking a wedding party of about 35 guests along the river Spree in an evening cruise. Those river cruises sound extremely no-go touristy, but every Berliner who has ever overcome his cool and taken one, e.g. forced by visiting parents, will contest that it’s a really striking experience – touristy or not.

In any case: The fact that their wedding day was crowned by such a heart-rendingly beautiful spectacle created by sun and clouds on this autumn evening was pure luck for the couple, Katja and Rainer. However, their choice for that night’s dinner had nothing to do with luck. They had invited a cook they knew from back when to create the wedding dinner in a Kaffeehaus called Zimt & Zucker on Schiffbauerdamm. The cook had brought his team of aides, and when the boat arrived back at the mooring right in front of the restaurant, an array of Amuse Gueules were already waiting for us.

And this is where the story really starts. What followed was an evening of life-changing food consumption (LCFC).

Those Amuse Gueules consisted of: Trout caviar on apple puree and toast; egg-plant crème with pomegranate seeds on home-made sour dough crust bread; and white wine sauerkraut on Pumpernickel with a cumin-honey creme fraiche. Frankly, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The taste of the sweet and sour fruity apple puree with just a hint of cinnamon, combined with the salty caviar on the heartily spiced toast, some fresh herbs added too… words fail me here, I literally felt tears of joy coming to my eyes.

I’m not going to go through every dish that followed. Suffice to say this. We started dinner at 7.30 p.m., and when I left the party at 2 a.m., some of the guests were still having dessert and/or cheese. In between were 6 hours of the finest, most original, most passionate food I’ve had in – what? Ages? My entire life? I have to mention one more dish: a Loup de Mer fillet, broiled in the skin, with a Sechuan pepper-corn flour crust, accompanied by warm spinach with pine seeds and catalan tomato-garlic bread. Dear god! I went over to the kitchen to beg for another portion, my entire table having asked me to beg for them too, but alas, there was no more.

And the desserts! Lord in High Heaven! An iced prune mousse so full of flavours… fresh waffles so juicy and sweet… a creme brulee… and the cheese plate – only the finest, most intense Italian and French cheeses… Do you know the feeling when someone gently strokes your skin with a feather and how that titillating leaves your skin very delicately sensitive? That’s how my palate felt after dinner last night, and still feels like today.

Anyway, here’s the catch. After dinner, at something like 1.30 a.m., I went into the kitchen to throw myself at the feet of the cook, Wayne’s World-style – “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy”. We talked a while, and it turned out that this man does not work at a restaurant at the moment – he used to run one in Prenzlauer Berg but had to give up a few months ago. The name of this cook is Oliver Sartorius, and I’VE GOT HIS DAMN MOBILE NUMBER!!

That very night, me and the other guys present at the dinner started to plot that cook’s future. We knew we just HAD to do something – someone who cooks so fantastically just HAS to be supported, promoted, revered, given any chance to do it again! My suggestion was to create an invitation-only dinner club around Oliver’s talent. Five, six people throwing in a couple 100 Euros every month and inviting selected individuals to clandestine locations with an adequate kitchen. “Selected individuals” would not be chosen by income or social status but by their ability to savour (so no vegetarians – sorry). After a while, the word will spread and people will KILL to be among the invited.

I will keep you posted.

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes