Jakobs Hofe, Asparagus & Pumpkin Farm, Beelitz

May 22, 2012 3 Comments

Two years is the length of time t it took me to concede that “White asparagus is not that bad.”  I would go as far as to say: “It is rather good.

“For the last couple of springs, I would encounter mountains and mountains of the stuff, swollen and pale – looking like a sick relative of my beloved green asparagus and turn my nose up at them.  I would scan the corners of the stand, be it at the supermarket or an outdoor market until I would spot a few bundles of the green stuff, usually imported from Greece or Spain.

What made me change my mind?  A plate of asparagus, boiled potatoes and schnitzel at the Ritz.  Ravenous after my Athens flight with EasyJet (why did Stelios call it ‘Easy’ I wonder, is it tongue in cheek? Is it so that when you are ranting like a mad person in your head, about the injustice of paying the same price you would pay a ‘civilized’ carrier, one that doesn’t make you cue ad infinitum, the word ‘easy’ can continually bait you?  Yes, I would fly another carrier, any other carrier, except wouldn’t you know it ‘easy’ jet is the only one that continues to fly to Athens from Berlin.)

A meal at the Ritz will make most things palatable, they even gussy up the lemon half with a bit of yellow gauze (to keep the pips from dropping out when you squeeze the lemon, since you ask).  €30 is what that plate of food cost.  ’Beelitz’ asparagus is what it said on the menu.  Beelitz and its asparagus seems to be to Berliners what Yorkshire and its rhubarb seems to be to Londoners.  I have journeyed to Yorkshire and strained my ears with the rest of the rhubarb tourists listening for the rhubarb squeak.  It seemed reasonable to me that I should travel to Beelitz and see white asparagus in  the stalk.After spending some time poking around on www.beelitzerspargel.de, I settled on Jacobs Hof.  I bundled hubby and daughter off into the car and 45 minutes later we were staring at a 2 story inflatable asparagus spear with a big grin pasted on its face. We made our way to the restaurant and were asked if we had a reservation – ‘Eh…? To eat asparagus in the middle of nowhere?” I thought?  But the lady wasn’t off her rocker, it was buzzing in there.  True most people were over 70 but they were having a grand old-time.  They found us a table.  We ordered asparagus with potatoes and ham (€12.50) with hollandaise sauce.  The asparagus was dreamy, the potatoes were incredibly flavourful and the ham was, good sliced ham.  The hollandaise sauce was from a carton, I think it almost always is here, except for at the Ritz but even there it was more like a mayonnaise than an hollandaise.  To be honest, even that didn’t sully the asparagus.  It was good.  So good that I bought some and made them with homemade hollandaise a few days later.  Read more of this post

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HBC., Mitte

May 18, 2012 Leave a comment

 HBC. is the most complete embodiment of Berlin I’ve encountered in a restaurant, in my two years of eating out in the city.

To begin with, the train stop is Alexanderplatz- a cluster of mismatched buildings which look like they were put there by a child playing building blocks. Someone who thinks it’s perfectly normal that Barbie, Minnie Mouse and a couple of Lego figures should all be having tea together.  

If you walk down from the station to Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, you have to walk by the ugly shop fronts exhibiting their wares, cringe inducing shoes for €10 or worse, a 3D Buddha who follows you as you walk by. (now who is the snob?)If Sylee hadn’t told me HBC. was up the stairs, I would have walked right past it.  Many times.  Another Berlin characteristic, while restaurants the world over shout from the highest mountain about their presence, quite a few restaurants in Berlin are happy to crouch on a bar stool, legs crossed, arms folded and let you figure it out.

Then there is the space itself.  Enormous.  And the number of bodies contained within, the merest fraction of what they should be to make the rent of such a large place, with views of St. Mary’s Church and the top-heavy Fernsehturm,  viable.As for “What does it say it does on the box?”.  Well what doesn’t it do? ‘A combination art gallery, lounge, party space and art-world cantina’ (excerpt from the New York Times Review, full article here).  In a city where central commercial space is still plentiful and cheap (unlike apartments which, I’ve been looking to buy, have become freakin’ expensive considering the low rents you get) you often get this mixed use of space.The waiter can not be readily identified as such, except that at some point he struts over, hips thrust forward and carves out a dramatic arc through the air with the menus as he hands them over to us.  His arms are (of course) tattooed, an interesting medley the most striking of which is a series of faded burgundy rings, like bracelets or uniform zebra stripes that run up his forearm.

The dining room is eclectic.  Plastic chairs I remember from my art classes coupled with starched heavy tablecloths and glasses so polished, they look like they just came out of their box. Heavy cement lamps, suspended over most tables  and emanating a warm orange light.  Not forgetting the large windows with a view onto St. Mary’s Church.

The menu is only €33 for 3 courses and a side.  There are some kooky things to be found on it, a rhubarb risotto for instance.  The exotic sounding glazed duck with kumquat and liquorice onion which on the plate is a perfectly tame pan-fried duck breast, a neat huddle of kumquats off to one side and an onion not quite tender enough for me to eat with no discernible taste of liquorice. Read more of this post

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Da Baffi, Italian Food, Wedding

May 13, 2012 10 Comments

There is something about the combination of the gold lettering and the white pleated curtains in the window of Da Baffi that makes me think of an old-fashioned box of chocolates.  The kind where once you took the carton lid off, you had to peel a sticker off the seam of the thick pearlified paper.  Each chocolate would be housed in its own ruffled white paper.  Picking one up would create a pleasing commotion of paper wrappers rubbing against each other.We are seated in the back room.  Instead of table cloths, there are tea towels that have been sewn together to make perpendicular runners.  The adornment of the room comes from the squiggly white flourescent light on one wall and the fat bodied vases on each table.  The flowers, not the €1.99 bargain tulips you can get at any Lidl, but a composition of spiky leaves and small flowers you might expect to find somewhere in the mediterranean.There is something of the Lavanderia Vecchia in that back room, the colour scheme, the neon – not as extreme nor as contrived but if the two restaurants were people and I found out that Da Baffi was the son of a cousin twice removed, it wouldn’t surprise me.  I don’t think there is any relation of course.  In fact, Lavanderia employs a young man from Munich (?) as their chef whereas walk by the kitchen at Da Baffi and amid the clinks and the clangs you will here the long ‘a’s’ of Italian.The menu, excuse me as I make the cross (I am not religious you understand but some things just warrant excessive gratefulness), is printed on a narrow piece of paper.  It lists a variety of carpaccios, a caponata, a burrata from Puglia, as starters. Followed by a choice of 3 pastas, tagliolini with truffle for example, or a risotto with gorgonzola, pear and nuts.  No Bolognese although the kitchen kindly makes a small plate of farfalle with tomato sauce for Layla.  Read more of this post

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Maialino, Focaccia, Mitte

May 8, 2012 3 Comments

On the right side of the cavernous Bar Celona restaurant on Hannoversche str is the tiny focaccia deli run by a brother and sister team from Italy.  Underneath a silhouette of a pig, ears askew, ‘maialino’ is scrawled in lowercase childlike handwriting.  On either side of the entrance the walls have been painted black and (I only realize this later) the menu is listed.   Through the window, a communal table painted in white and hanging above – the whimsical chandelier by Ingo Maurer, love letters discarded and ‘maialino’ business cards suspended in their place. Because the design is so friendly and informal, I expect to like it.  Much like a first day of school when you scan the room and find someone you like the look of and think “Oh, I want to be friends with her.”I do like it.  The menu is simplicity itself.  It’s all about what you can get between two slices of fluffy focaccia.  Lardo di Colonnata in the ‘toscana’.  Mortadella and caciotta cheese in the ‘emiliana’.  Don’t expect a sandwich bloated with filling, rather, thin slivers of your filling of choice set off the star of the show – the focaccia.  Which they buy in from an Italian baker from Naples (but who bakes in Berlin). There is a tiny daily menu of soups – yesterday I tried the white asparagus.  A large serving, somewhat on the thin side but at least without the dreaded greasy twang of a knorr stock cube .  My friend had a Quiche, more like a pie.  I do find the focaccia to be the best thing on the menu, especially when combined with some salad leaves, dressed with a salty balsamic dressing and wearing a beret of sliced tomatoes. Read more of this post

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Pbox Eatery, Kifissia-Athens, Greece

May 4, 2012 2 Comments

In Athens, I regress back to the lazy teenager I once was. Even though it’s May, it’s hot enough that my brain begins to tick into action after the sun has set. Even then, there is only a skeleton crew operating.  It turns out that interminable grey days are boon to productivity rather than the bane of it.

Yesterday, the radiant sunshine was accompanied by a cool breeze.  This coupled with sucking down two ice laden frappés (turns out that frappés are not a quirky habit but an operational necessity in these parts)  in quick succession made me decide to go down to Kifissia and try out PBox.  A diminutive eatery I had earmarked on my last trip but missed when I found them closed for lunch.I suffer from mild bouts of spring fever.  Among the squat bitter orange trees that line the narrow pavements in my mother’s neighborhood of Holargos it’s not too bad but once I get to Kifissia all villas, nestled in verdant gardens, my sneezing takes on the frequency of machine gun fire.  Entirely worth it, I love Kifissia and its lack of high rises tottering on pillars.  You would never see one neighbor talking to another in a wife beater ribbed white undershirt, hairy nipple poking out through the saggy arm holes in Kifissia (something you will see frequently in most neighborhoods).No, in Kifissia, everyone is elegant, coiffed and sunglassed.  The older ladies wear large chunky jewelery perhaps to complement their large hair (I don’t think they every truly said goodbye to Dynasty).  Every female over 10 years old has a flawless mani-pedi with that telltale sheen that speaks of a trip to the salon as opposed to a home job.  10% of the stores are for rent here as opposed to the rest of Athens where I would put the number closer to 60%.

There are lots of ladies (and gentlemen) lunching and plenty of places catering to them.

P Box is an all day eatery that snags a lot of them.  The menu runs along two different veins, Greek or Japanese / Asian / International.   The Greek part is simple fare, cheeses and meats from around Greece, grilled halloumi from Crete for instance and sausage from Lefkada.  And then a faffy aspirational menu, carpaccio, blue cheese tart, something 3 tables away with way too much truffle oil gaining in pungency as the heat got to it- lots of green salads with things on top, say chicken or tuna.  I’m lamenting this lack of conviction to going with local when it occurs to me that most of the tables have ordered the aspirational stuff with a favouring for the large bowls of frilly salad leaves.Criminal really!  The tomatoes here are so fleshy and full of juice that I cut them straight into the bowl I will be eating them from.  From the two tomatoes I cut up for lunch today, I had over a cup of tomato juice to which I added 1/4 cup of organic olive oil from a greek monastery and a shower of oregano that the 80-year-old mother of a friend of my mothers picked herself in Chania.  Such purity and strength of flavour and there they go eating a frilly leaves with overly sweet Dijon mustard dressing. Read more of this post

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Petit Fleury, Café, Mitte

April 16, 2012 2 Comments

I’ve never been to papa Fleury or the original CafeFleury (no website so have a look on the HG2 write up here) as it’s known across the street. The blue awning caught my eye as I trundled past it on the M1. Along with the menu listing, white on black, in a cluster of different fonts.  And the outdoor seating, provided in the form of stacked ChariTea crates.  Good looking place, it has to be to open on this street where rent must cost a pretty penny.I observed all this and more, jotted the name down and then as usual forgot all about it.  Until a short time later both Cee Cee and Sugarhigh included it in their newsletter in the same week.

Lest I forget again, I quickly made plans for lunch with my girlfriend.  When we arrived,  someone had already scratched some nonsense into the thick pane of glass.  I felt for the owners.  I know how hard it is to open up a business and get it going well enough that you can stick your neck out and open a second place only to have someone deface it within weeks…The spunky awning outside is echoed with a wall of the same colour inside.  A bar is lined with framed photographs of  movie stars (Paul Newman, Marlon Brando type movie stars).  There is an open fridge where you can help yourself to yogurts, quarks, drinks and the likes.  Another serviced vitrine with some cakes and sandwiches.  Or you can order from a small menu.  The kitchen at the back is visible through a large open pass – always a sign of confidence that the cooks have nothing to hide.

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Sasaya, Japanese, Prenzlauerberg

March 29, 2012 2 Comments

Heston Blumenthal and Raymond Blanc are both self-taught.  Unhampered by other people’s ways of doing things they were able to develop their distinctive food personalities.  What they don’t say (but I think is equally important) is how naive they were starting out.  Had they both been told that they would be working towards multi-michelin stars and helping to change the face of food in Britain I’m sure that they would have seized up with fear and found something else to do.Now, almost two years on (In July) I see my own naiveté in this blog.  I optimistically set out to find the equivalents of my London darlings in Berlin (you will find a list of them on my favourites page).  More often than not I came up empty but at no point did it occur to me to stop because what I was looking for didn’t exist.I was in London for almost a week  recently and riding at the top of a bubbly red double-decker bus, I smiled at what I had been endeavouring to do.  London is a city of choice and excess where anything you want can be yours for the taking – provided of course, you’ve got the money to pay for it.  A good portion of these affluent folks are young, 20-35 young (a lot of trustafarians to be sure accompanied by a minority successful in their own right).  Dinner on Tuesday at Yauatcha, I was flanked on one side two girls their cheeks still plump from childhood, their nails perfectly painted in pretty pastels and on the other by a young couple (the female part of which also had a manicure – prettiness appears to be celebrated in London). At Nopi on Wednesday the crowd was a tick older but a decade younger than you would ever find anywhere charging those equivalent prices in Berlin.I think I might have nailed it, the reason why I can’t find enough of the places I like here; informal, no tablecloths, laid back but knowledgeable service, small plates and above all seasonal, flavourful good quality food with international awareness.   It’s because if there are moneyed people here they are older. They all flock to places like Grill Royal or Borchardt.  Places where waiters hinge at the hips, use crumb scrapers and behave like petty bureaucrats grossly misusing their  teeny tiny allocation of power-  sticking you in the basement by the toilet (Borchardt) if they don’t like the look of you.I didn’t have a clue about any of this in 2010.  When everyone I knew sent me to Sasaya when I asked for Japanese, I wasn’t convinced.  ’There must be better than this.  There must be a place like Dinings here…surely?”

Yeah…not so much…Originally, when I went for dinner, I found Sasaya to be too dark, the classical music too loud, the smell..boiled rice mixed with seaweed made my nose crinkle and the trouble in securing a table seemed exaggerated.  I returned for lunch last week (much to the bemusement of the friends who had recommended it to me 2 years ago).  I found I prefered it during the day, the rainbow theme is easy to spot and playful (the music is still too loud and they really need to crack a window open somewhere). Read more of this post

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Traube, Alpine (?) Food (Set Lunch), Mitte

March 20, 2012 3 Comments

I walked into an opticians the other day, on the Oranienburger Tor side of Friedrichstrasse.  The visual clues of the store told me I would be able to purchase something a little out of the ordinary and of good quality.  The frames are mostly stored in drawers so you have to enlist the help of a salesperson.  This I did, a young man with large frames, with lenses so thin they looked like dummies.  He picked up a pair that he thought looked great (Lindberg, large, thin metal frames.  He stood back and looked at them on my face, nodding appreciatively.“Yes, yes.”

“Don’t you think they look too big?” I asked

“Big? No. It’s only because your frames are so old-fashioned (read narrow), your frames must be at least 8 years old.”

“They are 3 years old actually.”

“Well, the model is 8 years old. These are so modern.”

We get to talking about prices. €30 for the eye test. €405 for the frames. €285 per not-made-in-china lenses. I skewer one eye shut and cast the other one heaven ward why I work out the cost.

“That’s €1’000 for a pair of glasses.”  I’ll readily admit the price caught me off guard.“Let me check.” he says reaching for a calculator (this just in- expensive glasses don’t make you any smarter). “No – €975, the €30 eye test is a gift.” (A gift? That’s like Louis Vuitton giving you a handful of lollipops with the purchase of one of those wallets – Umm, I’m pretty sure I’ve paid for those lollipops!)

I didn’t walk out of there with a new pair of glasses, not that time nor the next when I took along my good friend, a woman of many talents – one of which is the ability to speak the truth without hurting anyone’s feelings.  There was no hesitation, the verdict was a resounding “No!”I recapped the experience, astronomically priced glasses, that didn’t suit me because they were on trend?  Snobs are a funny bunch.  Clearly I had landed on a frame snob but the characteristics are the same whether you are dealing with a highbrow literature snob, or a “I make more money than you” snob, or a “I only eat organic foods, cycle everywhere, have a 0 carbon footprint and when I die I am going to be buried in a cardboard box – which will be recycled.” snob or ‘my marble collection is shinier than yours” snob.

The whole thing put me off, snobs in general on any subject, put me off.  Which is why I when I had to pick a place for a lunch date on Friday I went for something decidedly unhip – Traube.I had avoided it in the past because it just seemed too stiff, an ‘elbows off the table’ kind of joint.  And too expensive, judging from the Michelin stickers by the door (it turns out it doesn’t have a star but a crossed fork and spoon, meaning ‘charming restaurant‘).  Would I have to dress up?  It seemed to be occupied exclusively by males, in their 40′s, wearing navy blue suits and red ties.

All I can say is I was wrong on all counts.  I went there for lunch with my new friend Lucy (who writes a wonderful food blog called The Colour of Pomegranates).  I was slightly nervous that I had corralled someone I didn’t know all that well into an awkward lunch but €15 for 2 courses and coffee on starched table cloths seemed too good to pass up.

Here is the thing about Traube – it’s good.  It’s supposed to be Alpine by the way (I know. Right? Because that is what we are missing in the city of Berlin) but what we had for lunch was far removed from the Alpine fare I normally eat.  A lot of the food had garlic in it, good garlic, properly cooked, adding flavour in all the right places.  It was intensely coloured almost mediterranean in some cases and full of textures – my potato rösti had a homemade potato chip on it.I started with a salad and Lucy had a cup of what had been described to us as a red pepper and tomato soup.  When it came to swapping plates, it tasted differently from what I had imagined. Sour for example with droplets of oil jostling with the spreading sour cream.  ”What’s this meat?” (Polish Kielbasa I found out later) I asked holding up a morsel.  Then “Is this salami??” And finally “No way, did they put pickle in this!?” (they did and pickle brine)  I motioned the (incredibly nice) waitress over and asked her to confirm all the ingredients I had identified.  ”It’s called Solyanka, it’s a soup from the Ukraine.” she explained. “Oh! I love Solyanka, it’s the only thing I enjoyed eating in Moscow.” Lucy added.  It’s also one of Angela Merkel’s favourite foods (see this article in the Guardian ‘East Germans are still different” – thanks Lucy for the link). Read more of this post

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Hofcafé, Garden Cafe, Wannsee

March 18, 2012 6 Comments

Can it be?

One and a half days of brilliant sunshine seem to confirm it.

Although the trees are still brown and bare with no promissory green buds.But today as I sat in the courtyard of the Hofcafé in Wanssee, I could hear euphoric bird song and pretty flowers dazzled me every which way I looked. They were all greenhouse grown and potted but it didn’t matter to me.  My eyes fixed on their brilliant colour.  I grew optimistic and slid my sweater off, exposing my bare arms – ah well, perhaps a smidgen too early for that but a whisper of what is to come.My first week in Berlin, I remember chatting to a Brazilian father in Kollwitzplatz, I was delirious with the excitement that seems to afflict nearly all those moving to Berlin.  I gushed about how wonderful it was.

“Yes…” he paused, perhaps considering whether he should quash my enthusiasm.  ”The winters though…  They are very hard.  Grey skies every day, for days, for months…”  His voice trailed off and so did his gaze, as if contemplating something unsettling.Pah!  Probably seems that way to a Brazilian used to seeing everything in Technicolor I thought then.  Now two years later, a Londoner entirely acclimatized to setting out with an umbrella even if there isn’t a cloud is the sky and a person who believes that SAD is just another made up Western affliction to keep company with lactose intolerance – I say

“Yeah, WOW! Those Berlin winters will knock all the ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens‘ right out of you!” Until all that’s left is, well the grey fluff you find when you move the sofa.

If what my iPhone tells me is to be believed, Spring may just be coming to town next week.  I hope it plans on sticking around until buxom Summer knocks it aside. Read more of this post

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Horváth, Austrian / German, Kreuzberg

February 28, 2012 6 Comments

The former food critic of the New York Times, Frank Bruni, visited Berlin a while back.  He ate at Noto, Tim Raue, Horvàth and Hartmanns and then wrote an article: “Sorry to Disappoint, but I Ate Well in Berlin.”  (I suppose that ‘You’re right, it’s not great’ wouldn’t have been interesting enough to write-up.)  In the almost two years that I’ve been here, I’ve seen small improvements.  Still when I recently came back from a 3 day trip to London a couple of weeks ago and my husband texted me:

“I’m going to treat you for an early Valentine’s. (13 of Feb) Where do you want to go to dinner? Anywhere you want!  My treat.”  3 hours later I still hadn’t replied.

“Hello?! Did you get my message?!”  Came another text.

He walked in early at 7 asking “Hey – don’t you want to go out?”

“No! There is no where I want to eat in Berlin!” I wailed dramatically after which we settled for Hartweizen where, except for the enormous drawing of an Egon Schiele style entwined couple but with much more meat on their bones, there wasn’t much to report.Bruni is right, Berlin restaurants are taking great strides but my (trying for humble) opinion is that the improvements that are occurring are within the relatively safe niche of hearty Austrian / German cooking.  Which is precisely my problem with eating out here.  I don’t have memories of jolly knödel rolling off plates and pork knuckle so large you can’t see over the top of it.  I buy kohlrabi good-naturedly, only to find it weeks later, when I’ve used up all the other vegetables in the drawer, once erect fronds sagging sadly.  Then I google recipes, usually find a salad where it’s cut into matchsticks, make it, eat it and then return to google to find out nutritional value because surely there must be a more compelling reason than taste to eat this funny looking Brassica.  Stodge is not my friend, portions with no regard for where the plate ends and the rim begins have me reaching for a paper bag to hyperventilate in.

The kind of food I like to eat – small portioned, light, high quality seasonal fare, in a non fussy interior, preferably employing the no-reservation and better prices policy that has become popular the world over (see Nicholas Lander’s latest column in the FT for more on the subject) and therefore allowing me the freedom to indulge food urges at short notice – has yet to arrive in Berlin.I hadn’t come to that conclusion yet.  I was still rather thrilled by the former NYT food critic eating in Berlin and liking it!

I picked Horváth (having already eaten at Noto and Tim Raue and having deemed Hartmann’s a bit pricey ).  You can order a la carte at  Horváth but seem to be discouraged from doing so as main courses carry a surcharge of €5.  Alternatively, you can choose from a 3 course traditional menu for €40, a 4 course vegetarian menu for €46 lastly the ‘innovation’ menu 5 courses for €62 or 7 courses €76.  I find the menu’s architecture convoluted, I don’t necessarily like the combinations on the cheaper menu, it’s already 9pm and I can’t fathom making my way through the 5 course menu and paying a surcharge of €5 on what seem to already be healthy main course prices brings out my inner Ebenezer (although two of my companions who are not similarly disabled order the Pike-Perch / Zander and are charged €28.50 instead of €23.50) that only leaves the vegetarian. Read more of this post

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