The time I went to Berlin and ate everything (Part Three: Kreuzberg and a tale of two doners)

Situated in the Western half of Berlin, where it used to abut the Wall, Kreuzberg is the city’s hub for all things hipster. It swarms with attractive people on bicycles, interesting eateries and is home to a vast number of boutiques selling organic cotton t-shirts (many of which I spent an alarming amount of money in). It reminded me of Manchester’s Northern Quarter – a place full of tall, dark buildings, laid-back vibes and excellent dive bars.

I fell in love with Kreuzberg from the first moment I wandered into it. It was a sunny August afternoon – the kind where the heat rises in waves off the pavement and your feet throb and feel heavy. I had an ice cold Club Mate in one hand and my husband’s slightly sweaty palm in the other. When we arrived there, we were both absolutely starving. We had spent the morning wandering up to the top of the Reichstag, darting around groups of tourists and trying to spot all of the landmarks pointed out to me by my audio tour guide (and failing miserably – my geography remains notoriously awful). I had also drunk a significant amount of beer, which meant that my stomach was craving doner kebabs like a Z-list celebrity craves attention. Therefore, when we found a handy grill house, it seemed only right to settle down there for a late lunch.

Doner is the official fast food choice of Berlin and Kreuzberg (the centre of the city’s Turkish community) is its spiritual home, with a grill house on practically every corner. It was here that I learned an important lesson. When ordering a doner kebab in Berlin, all you need to do is mutter “ein doner bitte” and hand your money over. Do not, as I did, point at a giant plates of falafel and kebab meat on a menu overhead and gleefully proclaim, “I’ll have those please!” Well, not unless you’ve got a spare stomach handy.

A giant plate of Falafel

Mr McMc’s leaning tower of doner meat

As it is, this was a serious case of our eyes being bigger than our bellies. Our food was delicious – the balls of falafel were soft, warm and fluffy with a nubby texture from bits of chickpea and sesame seed. The accompanying bread wrapped itself around them like a doughy lover, with globs of thick Turkish yoghurt helping to add a bit of a sour edge to the carbfest. Mr McMc’s leaning tower of doner meat was equally delicious – soft with slightly crunchy edges and wonderfully filthy. We managed to eat most of it, but had to bid a quick retreat to our apartment afterwards so we could snooze most of it off.

I finally got my longed-for doner on our final day there at Maroush – a small Lebanese place that bustled with hungry Berliners. It’s not exactly a restaurant as such, more a place where you sit and watch the world go by while eating some truly sublime sandwiches.

Doner and Chips

This possibly the best kebab I’ve ever eaten and a world away from the sweaty specimens you get served up in Bootle. A large, fresh pita bread is stuffed full of meat and chips (that’s right – chips. Why don’t people do that in this country? GET IT SORTED, KEBABIERS OF THE UK) and sealed before being grilled over charcoal. It is then doused with an array of yoghurt & garlic-based sauces and handed over to you.

The final product is truly blissful. Each bite is filled with smoky lamb, crunchy red cabbage and a good proportion of chips. And I can’t not mention their Baklava. For just one Euro, you got a hefty slab of honeyed heaven – the perfect bite (or ten) of sweetness to end a meal Extra kudos is due to the staff for the Turkish version of “O Tannenbaum” that was playing when I went in to order.

I didn’t just eat doners during my visit to Kreuzberg (although I was exceedingly tempted to). We enjoyed a wonderful meal at a Persian restaurant called ’Safran’, helpfully positioned directly across the road from the bar where we did most of that evening’s drinking. Meal options come in small, medium and large portions and, yet again, I let alcohol dictate my choices, leading us to order an obscene amount of food.

A platter of Persian stews at Safran

A Vegetarian platter at Safran

Persian food is big on stews, grilled meats and delicately scented rices, and we stuffed ourselves silly on great heaps of mashed aubergines with yoghurt, rice pilafs flavoured with tart Iranian limes and broad beans, dips made of goats’ cheese, pomegranate molasses and ground walnuts and a vast amount of lamb. I also managed to try a beef stew that came topped with a handful of chips – apparently, this is the traditional Persian way to serve it, rather than a ploy for luring us in. Chips with everything appeared to be a bit of a theme during our trip.

When we finally headed back to Liverpool, I had gained four pounds in weight, along
with a suntan and a taste for Aperol Spritz. Berlin was one of most fascinating and brilliant cities I’ve ever visited – full of amazing culture and wonderful cuisine. I’m already planning my next visit, if only so I get my chops around more of those chip-filled kebabs.

The time I went to Berlin and ate everything (Part Two: Adventures in West Berlin)

A food stall I saw in ‘Zoo’ which sold Bratwurst Pizza. I didn’t eat this,.

And so on to West Berlin. Despite the two halves of the city being unified with the fall of the wall in 1989, there’s still something disparate about the Eastern and Western halves of the city. The formerly Communist part of Berlin has embraced Capitalism with open arms, as can be seen in the glittering edifices of Potsdamer Platz, which looks like something out of ‘Blade Runner’. Meanwhile, the formerly modern-looking buildings on the Western side look slightly tired and dated, as though they’re heaving out a long sigh at how things have turned out over the course of the past 23 years.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area known as ‘Zoo’, the beating consumerist heart of West Berlin. Before coming to the city, I knew only three things about it – one, that it contained a Zoo full of polar bears, penguins and other cute and fluffy animal delights, two, that it was the setting for seminal early 80s film ‘Christiane F’ (well worth a viewing if you like films featuring super hot teenage heroin addicts, scenes of vintage Berlin, and footage from a Thin White Duke-era David Bowie concert. He sings ‘Heroes’ in German! It’s exactly as amazing as you think it’s going to be!) and three, it was a great place to go if you fancied a Currywurst.

 

I always fancy a Currywurst – especially when it’s as good as the specimens you get from Curry 36. This was an unassuming little stall situated outside Zoo U-Bahn station, which had a giant queue of tourists, students and hungry office workers snaking around it. For five Euros, you can get two fat, smoky sausages and a large portion of hot, crispy fries – all smothered in curry ketchup and mayonnaise. We accompanied these with bottles of achingly cold Becks, and all patrons get a free lungful of ozone fumes from numerous German cars – as Curry 36 is a stall, there’s no seating area meaning you eat standing up. It’s totally worth the discomfort.

However, woman cannot live on Currywurst alone. After a few beers in the food hall at KaDeWe (the largest department store in Europe, which contains some of the most splendid specimens of sausage I’ve ever seen) Mr. McMc and I decided that we’d treat ourselves to a traditional slap-up German meal in a traditional slap-up German restaurant. Which led us to Marjellchen.

How to describe Marjellchen? Well, imagine going for dinner in your Grandmother’s house. Your Grandmother who is fond of kitsch ornaments, whose walls are covered in old photographs of actors you’ve never heard of, who enjoys playing wonky (and continually skipping) records of warbly chanteuses. Oh yes, and this hypothetical Granny from a part of Germany that no longer exists.

Marjellchen specialises in serving up the food from the Ehemalige Deutsche Ostgebiete, the lost areas of Germany: East and West Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania. This is hauntological cuisine, all served up in a strange time warp of a restaurant (when we walked in, we were treated to the sight of a diner simultaneously wearing a monocle and smoking a pipe). And it was absolutely amazing.

A fillet of smoked eel, accompanied by bread and butter.

To my eternal discredit, I probably filled up too much on my starter – a fillet of smoked eel, accompanied by bread and butter. This was my first experience of eel and it was a revelation. The flesh was firm and meaty, emitting just the right amount of smoke in its flavour. However, the real highlight was the accompanying basket of bread. It was full to bursting with fresh, pleasingly chewy slices of rye, some of which were studded with ever-so-slightly-sweet pumpkin seeds.

Masurian Jugged Game of stag and wild-boar, with bacon and forest mushrooms, besides potato dumplings, stewed cabbage and cranberries

My main was the rather clunkily translated Masurian Jugged Game of stag and wild-boar, with bacon and forest mushrooms, besides potato dumplings, stewed cabbage and cranberries. This was seriously old-school food – the kind of thing you’d serve up to a hunter who’d spent all day tracking deer through a wintry forest. The stew itself was rich, warming and tangy – the kind of dish that my father would describe as ‘sticking to your ribs’. However, the true highlights were the little potato dumplings that came as a side. I’d had potato dumplings before when I visited Prague last year so I had some idea of what to expect. However, these were wolfing great carb bombs comprised of buttery mashed potato and not much else. I loved them, but I could only eat one before admitting defeat. “Did you not like them?” said the owner when she cleared my plate, and I was forced to show her my distended belly to prove that that I’d eaten so much, I was carrying a full-term food baby.

It’s difficult to do credit to Marjellchen in words, as there is so much uniquely brilliant about the place – the clientele; the wine, which comes in little glass jugs which you pour into your glass; the fact that every dish – even the desserts – appears to be designed for people who exist solely on a diet of meat and potatoes. Essentially, if you’re ever in Berlin and fancy dining on the kind of food that the Kaiser would have eaten, you should definitely pay it a visit.

Next time, I’ll talk about Kreuzberg – land of hipsters, donor kebabs and some of the best baklava I’ve eaten in my life.

The time I went to Berlin and ate everything (Part One)

Berlin was always one of those places that I wanted to visit, but never managed to go to. It wasn’t for want of trying though. My 20s are littered with diary entries detailed with elaborate plans, Easyjet timetables and thwarted ambition. Turns out that shit boyfriends + epic skintness tend to equal being forced to stay at home crying and drinking cheap whisky in your pants. But the urge was still there, gnawing away at me, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise.

That opportunity came in the form of my honeymoon. If there’s one thing that getting married has taught me, it’s that the best part is the holiday you get to go on once the whole shebang is over and done with. I didn’t want to go anywhere transatlantic as I intended to go to New York for my (upcoming) 30th birthday, and I couldn’t really think of anything more boring than sitting on a beach in the middle of the Mediterranean for a week. And so it was that on the Sunday preceeding our wedding, me, Mr. McMc, and our two-day-hangovers boarded a cheap flight to the land of Currywurst, Kebabs and Techno. It had taken me longer than I would have liked, but I was finally going to Berlin.

MITTE/PRENZLAUER BERG

The flat we had rented was situated in Mitte, on the edge of Prenzlauer Berg – an area filled with bars, restaurants and ridiculously attractive people on bikes. On our first night, we went for a wander around our local area and stumbled upon Babel, a Lebanese restaurant. We were hot, tired and hungry, and decided to order a shared vegetarian platter and two donor kebabs. “Trust me, you won’t need the kebabs”, said the guy behind the counter. Being possessed of a mighty stomach, I was sceptical. Right up until the food arrived.

This thing was immense, overflowing with delicious goodies including huge blobs of delicately spiced dips, crunchy bourekas and freshly made stuffed vine leaves. It also came with two giant slabs of warm bread that we used as cutlery, scooping up hunks of deep fried halloumi with gusto. Deep fried halloumi has now become one of my all-time favourite deep fried food products, especially when it’s washed down with gulps of ice cold Becks.

Dessert comprised of a flaky pastry treat which was stuffed with something similar to Chinese red bean paste and covered with sesame seeds. It was delicious, the perfect morsel of sweetness to round off the meal. Our entire meal (with booze) came to roughly fifteen euros – not bad considering we’d both eaten a week’s worth of saturated fat in one sitting.

Prior to going to Berlin, I asked my friends on Twitter which restaurants we should check out during out stay and one name kept cropping up repeatedly- White Trash Fast Food, a rockabilly palace full of ne’er do wells, pop-up pirates and the best junk food in the city. It even had its own tattoo parlour in the basement.

I’ll admit, when I first arrived, I was slightly disappointed. The waiting staff were surly and the food looked like your average Burger-Palace fare. It felt like we’d just wandered into a hipster bierkeller rather than a den of iniquity. Thankfully, things improved once we were led into the bowels of the place. Each of the walls were decorated with trinkets and bizarre ephemera; from fish tanks full of scorpions to animal skulls. They also served some of the largest Aperol Spritz’s I’d ever feasted upon, made all the better for being served with an embellishment of three fat, briney olives on a cocktail stick.

Thai Chicken Wings at White Trash Fast Food

My beef brisket sandwich with onion rings. Sheer filth on a plate.

Mr McMc’s Bacon Cheeseburger

While it wasn’t the best meal I had during my stay in Berlin, it was certainly very very good, and delightfully trashy. Our Thai Chicken Wings were addictive – sweet, sticky and smoky, they were devoured in record time. However, the main star of the show was my Pulled Beef Brisket with Onion Rings. This was a monster of a sandwich, overflowing with piles of meltingly soft beef topped with barbeque sauce, a melted Kraft cheese slice and jalapenos. The only word that I can use here to truly describe this mighty sandwich was that it was filth. Sheer, overwhelming, finger-licking filth on a brioche bun, accompanied by paper thin onion rings which shattered at the first bite.  Mr. McMc’s Bacon Cheeseburger was equally as good – a great wodge of high quality meat, topped with a slab of bacon and which had big fat fries on the side.  The whole meal was so dirty, we almost felt compelled to have a post-coital cigarette after eating it.

The TV Tower in Alexanderplatz

Being two of those quasi-intellectual types, we also managed to fit in a bit of sightseeing around the Mitte/Prenzlauer Berg district. I loved walking up towards Alexanderplatz on a warm August night – wandering through Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz with its bars and boutiques, weaving around cyclists (whatever you do, do not walk in the cycle lanes), and gazing up at the giant TV tower which looms over the skyline like a giant beaming beacon of Communism.  Alexanderplatz was also where I discovered Club Mate. Club Mate is a fizzy drink made from yerba mate tea. When you first hear about it, it sounds a bit disgusting, but it’s actually quite tasty and incredibly refreshing (especially when it’s had a cheeky shot of vodka added to it).  It reminded me of a carbonated version of the sweet tea you find in the Southern states of the USA. I spent a fair bit of my time in Berlin chugging this stuff – mainly when waiting for the U-Bahn in the giant overheated food court which is Alexanderplatz station.

The World Clock in Alexanderplatz

Due to the fact that I’ve already written a thousand words, I’m going to split my Berlin experiences into three separate parts. Next time, I’ll talk about my adventures in West Berlin – which include currywurst, drinking beer in Europe’s largest food hall and dining on East Silesian food in a restaurant that looked like a German gran’s living room…