Alpenstueck, Bäckerai & Manufaktur, Alpine Inspired Food, Mitte

October 13, 2011 1 Comment

The Alpenstueck group have carved themselves out a neat little corner in this quiet pocket of Mitte.  (Interesting article on Iris Schmeid, owner of the group here.) If this group were a haircut, they would be buzzed up nice and neat in the back, with a plummeting horizontal fringe.  Black, of course and very very straight.  In other words, in control, high maintenance and stylish.

It started off with just Alpenstueck on an attractive corner site.  With a large wall of stacked up logs, gray leather banquettes, large wicker baskets, antlers (lamps, coat hangers or just piled up in a corner), with pale gingham lampshades.  During peak traffic times in Berlin (like the fashion shows or the Berlinale) getting a table is impossible.  Probably because Alpenstueck is the kind of place that visually impresses and because the staff have enough pedigree that you can count on them to be polite, spot your empty glass and even smile now and again.The food is a combination of 2 kitchens you will encounter often in Berlin: Swabian & Viennese (which all places here refer to as Alpine – but I ask you, where is the rösti and the fondue then?).  Meaning you can expect schnitzel, maultaschen, the vinegared potato salad, the wilted cucumber ribbons, goulash, kässpätzle, sauerbraten and so on.  I prefer the goulash at Meierei, the maultaschen at Manufactum and the schnitzel at Ottenthal.  But Meierei is a deli with limited seating that is closed for dinner; Manufactum is also a deli with annoying bar stools serving food on huge plates and tiny tables; and Ottenthal is almost too grown up (when being grown up meant boring and stuffy) and you always need a reservation. I guess if I had a friend in town that I wanted to impress, I would probably take them to Alpenstueck too. The added charm of Alpenstueck is that the streets around it feel abandoned and dark, probably cold because let’s remember we are in Berlin, then you see the warm glow of the restaurant, the smiling guests inside and you think, ‘Oo, I bet it’s nice in there.’ Read more of this post

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Friedrichshain: Aunt Benny’s, Cafe; Kinkibox, sewing cafe; La Récréation, Ceramics; Hops & Barley, micro-brewery; Olivia, Chocolate & Cafe; Goldschmiede, jewellery

October 8, 2011 2 Comments

At this juncture, I would say that I know Mitte inside out; Prenzlauerberg very well; I am surprisingly well-informed on where to eat in Kreuzberg; Charlottenburg is pretty shaky; Schöneberg, vaguer still; Friedrichshain had been blank (with the exception of Cupcake which I visited only once); don’t even get me started on places like Wilmersdorf it might as well be a different city, in fact from what I hear – it kind of is.While the weather was ‘Fa la la la la, la, la, la, laaaaaa‘ glorious, I took out my new copy of Tip’s Speisekarte (in which I got a mention on a special they did on food bloggers – Yay!) and plotted out a few addresses to try out. Then I printed out the google map and off I went with a girlfriend to explore.Yes, I’m a geek of epic proportions. Something it’s taken me a long time to embrace but now that I have, you know what? Geeks have much more fun.Annoyingly, two of the places I had been looking forward to trying were closed on Tuesday (Factory Girl! and Melt) but Aunt Benny’s was open. It has a similar aesthetic to places like The Barn or Bäckerei from the Alpentstueck group, namely, black painted walls, designer bare bulbs, good staff / service. I was still full from tasting a lot of mediocre food along our tour (places I won’t name because they were unoriginal even in their shortcomings) but I couldn’t resist the chickpea and kidney bean salad with rocket in a large weck jar.At that point the tour was over and it had been disappointing. The extraordinary number of young Europeans on the streets told me that there was more to Friedrichshain. Layla nodded off in her pram which gave me ample time to follow my nose.

(Note to self: always rely on the nose!)

I turned up some truffles, not all culinary but you don’t mind if I go off brief every now and again?

First up: La Récréation, a ceramic workshop with dishes so pretty they made me think of pastel coloured, Pierre Hermé macaroons. I wanted to buy a set then and there and thankfully was impeded from doing so by a man who actually was buying an entire dinner set.

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Ackerplatz market, Däri – Milk Workshop, The Circus of the Cycling Spoons and loving Berlin right now

September 30, 2011 9 Comments

You know how when you fall in love with someone?  You are utterly goo goo ga ga over how great they are? Exciting, unpredictable (in a good way), friendly. Then you suddenly find them reckless, unpredictable (in a bad way), and what you took to be friendliness, is actually horniness (and they hit on all your girlfriends, all the time)*. Most times that’s when you expedite them to the nearest exit.  Except on the very rare occasion where you see them stripped down and you think, yep, I get you and I still love you (yeah, close your mouth dear, I’m as surprised as you are).My guess is that this is probably why almost 95% of love stories are about an unrequited / misunderstood love that is requited / understood for a blink before one or both of them dies. Romeo & Juliet? Had they lived, he would have probably become a shoe salesman and she would sport a bouffant red hair do.

Because it’s complicated, intangible even to express what it is, how it works, why it works? (Oh and if you ask me, the characters of  Miracle Max and his wife run circles around all the afore-mentioned lovers.)It’s easy to be in love with someone before all the dots have been connected but once they have, well then you find yourself thinking – “That’s just a stupid drawing of a couple of kittens playing with a ball of yarn. How kitsch, how dull, I was expecting something else, I saw myself with someone better…” dump.It’s sort of the same with cities, you visit once and you think ‘Ah, to live here, I would be the happiest person in the world.’ Then you do and discover that actually you can’t put up with all the dog poop (Paris); all the over 70s (Geneva); can’t afford it (London); all the Hogans sports shoes (Munich); all the motorcycles without mufflers…oh, oh…and the imminent financial collapse (Athens) – you get my drift.But Berlin, Berlin.  Well yes: the bureaucrats are exceedingly good at telling you, you haven’t filled in the right form; receiving a flyer that says I must go collect my parcel at the post office leaves me shaking with fear (they’re mean to me); and my eyes roll so far into their sockets every time the supermarket counter girls get up from their seat to make sure I am not wheeling out a lifetime supply of diapers, that I have to pull out my compact mirror to help roll the back into their place. Buuuuuuttttt……The rest of Berlin is fantastic.

You just need to step out of your door and let things happen to you.  No plan, necessary, no money even (although that certainly helps). Read more of this post

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Melrose and Morgan, Awakening Number 3

September 6, 2011 2 Comments

Food and I didn’t start out as fast friends. Far from it. I was a pernickity eater as a child. I only ate eggs, fried; chicken, breadcrumbed and panned; fries, hand cut – obviously and no thicker than 5 mm. If those things were not available then no amount of bartering or pleading would induce me to eat. I simply abstained. It goes without saying that I was a very skinny, very annoying child.

By my teenage years I discovered junk food. Things like frozen French fries doused in so much thousand island dressing that they sagged on the plastic fork like limp spaghetti. At home a meal that featured quite a lot was pasta with butter and feta cheese. Every now and then the posh supermarket at the end of our road would import some American cake mixes. My sister and I would make them together and marvel at how good they tasted.  That was one of the highlights in our sleepy Athens suburb. I can’t boast about eating in Michelin starred restaurant as a wee tot like Jay Rayner or mastering a perfect victoria sponge by age 7 like Nigel Slater. All this to say that the foodie I am today is the result of a slow evolution, a meandering path through some questionable tastes with 3 pivotal food awakenings.The first was moving to Paris when I was 17 and discovering a complex and fascinating world of food, of do’s and don’t’s. Do eat cheese after a meal, never for breakfast.

The second was that after squandering my twenties trying to fit into a variety of moulds I thought would be suitable for me and acceptable for my family and friends I decided to literally screw it and try something radically different. A hobby I had been nurturing furtively which seemed to make me happy but also seemed to be rather frivolous.Enter Leiths. I originally enrolled for just one term, then the second and finally the third. I was convinced that this was it, I had discovered what truly animated me. My enthusiasm got me through many restaurant doors but my lack of skills constantly sabotaged me. It all went pear shaped after a 4 daylong stint at Ottolenghi, where I was moved from salads, to pastry and back to salads again. Like a hot potato that no one wanted to hold for too long. Even before the talk with Yotam, I knew it was not going well.

This is a 5 year old picture

Maybe it speaks of a good life for which I should be grateful but that rejection confounded me. How could it be that after 10 directionless years, I had found something I truly loved and adored and it just… Well it just didn’t love me back? I had no idea how to process that reality. Read more of this post

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Efa’s, Frozen Yogurt, Mitte

August 19, 2011 9 Comments

Frozen yogurt.

Why bother?

Am I right?

It’s a little like saying, “I’m in the mood for something bland, something white.”

“Snow?”

“Nope, frozen yogurt.”In Miami over Christmas, I developed a taste for  Yogen Früz.  They do a dizzying array of flavours and make them ‘fresh’ for your order; meaning they feed what looks a like soap bar (but is in reality a frozen fruit bar) into a machine that blends it with frozen yogurt.  It’s highly addictive, especially chocolate frozen yogurt with Reese’s Pieces candies strewn on top.  And yes, I know that by ordering that I am totally missing the point of the whole low-fat thing but you haven’t tried it, you don’t know how good it is.

In Berlin however, frozen yogurt comes in one flavour: yogurt.  (Efa’s also does a seasonal flavour.)  Which is probably the more honest approach otherwise it’s a bit like tofu burgers.  Either you want tofu or you want a burger but to want both is like wanting a Siamesoodle (a cross between a Siamese cat and a poodle, don’t google it, I made it up).

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Kadó, Liquorice Shop, Kreuzberg

August 11, 2011 12 Comments

Liquorice.  In my head, people who eat it are a certain height (tall) and a certain complexion (pale).  Maybe because my dutch friend in highschool used to go gaga for the stuff (Ooo, can I say that now or is it trademarked?).  She’d be scrounging around in that bag like there was a gold coin at the bottom.  Intrigued, I would say “Hey Dutch girl!  Can you hear me up there? Pass the bag would you?”  Then I would pull out a black candy and take a nibble. Nope. Another. Nope. Until I had made my way through the selection.  ”Why do you eat this stuff anyway?”  I would ask, disgusted.  It must be genetic, this love of liquorice.  It’s a testament to the bijou shop design of Kadó that I was enticed to go in.  I sat awkwardly in the center surveying the two walls of apothecary jars, filled with the black stuff.  It didn’t take Layla long to cotton on; “This is Candy!  Mommy it’s candy!”  Yeah babe, but not as you know it.  I bought a large raspberry gummy candy, the size of a 2 Euro coin for Layla and a bag full of ‘beginners’ liquorice for me.  It was all weighed on old-fashioned scales.  The total is punched into an antique till, where you have to crank the lever on the side until it goes “cha ching!” (How perfectly perfect!) Read more of this post

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Amorino, Ice Cream Stall, Mitte

July 28, 2011 11 Comments

When I was a little girl I spent one summer in Egypt and I remember two things vividly; the Pekinese dog my father bought me and the mangoes.

They were smooth and creamy with not even the slightest hint of stinginess. The flesh was a deep orange and sweet but balanced with a prick of sour . I never ate mangoes like that again. They just don’t exist anywhere else.  The only time I found any fruit that bore any resemblance to those fondly remembered Egyptian ones was when Selfridges ran a Bollywood promotion in 2002 (yes, when a mango is that good, I can give you specific dates), they were selling small Alphonso mangoes for close to €5 a pop.  Those came close……and then, I had the mango ice cream at the Amorino stand in front of Galeries Lafayette and I was transported to those dark hot nights as a little girl in Egypt, staying up late and eating mangoes.

I researched the brand a little on the internet.  It’s a chain.  Started by two Italian guys that look like they are in the fashion business rather than the ice cream business.  On their website, they talk about how they only use organic ingredients and traditional methods and the chefs oversee the making of ice cream daily (blah, blah, blah). But with 43 shops in France alone and a further 15 in Europe, I’m pretty sure they’ve got a factory somewhere churning the stuff out. Read more of this post

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Blueberry Picking at Buschmann & Winkelmann in Klaistow

July 25, 2011 3 Comments

Two days of torrential rain in Berlin really and truly put the fear of winter into me. I had flashbacks of being trapped in doors for weeks. So on Saturday morning I resolved two things:1. To go on-line and look for flights to Miami.

2. Get out of the flat and out of Berlin for the day.Off we went to a pick your own (selbst pflücken) place Luisa had recommended in Klaistow.

What a place!  I’ve never seen anything quite like this in Europe.  They’ve made an amusement park out of it.  With giant bouncy domes; enough sand pits to shoot the next Pirates of the Caribbean; a petting zoo; boars; rams; a tree climbing area, complete with hard hats and ropes (Climb Up).

I didn’t find any blueberry toys or asparagus pens but there were strawberry bear statues and strawberry seats.  In their store, they sold blueberry everything: jams, jellies, liqueurs and candies.Buschmann-Winkelmann runs events from April through to December.  White asparagus, strawberries, blueberries, corn and pumpkins feature as highlights throughout the year.

On the 27th of August there is even a Line Dancing workshop (15:30 – 17:30 taught Enrico Adler, the 2007 Line Dancing Champion, yes, apparently there is such a thing.) followed by a Country Feast of barbecue with spare ribs and all the fixings.  I can’t even conceive how such an event, organized by some German folk from the country would go…but I can imagine it being a good laugh. Read more of this post

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Paris: Mariage Freres, tea; La Grande Epicerie, groceries; Jipangue, Japanese food & Korean BBQ

June 14, 2011 6 Comments

*What has happened to the Parisians? It’s as if someone has put something in the collective water system, to render them all (well mostly) cordial. Of course there are still exceptions the man who couldn’t get past my bag at La Grande Epicerie who muttered very audibly “Excuse moi madame, mais il y a pas que vous dans le monde!” (Excuse me madame, but you are the only person in the world).

Similarly, shops are opened later and some even on Sundays on the Champs Élysées, in the Carrousel du Louvre and they have these beautiful mini-supermarket concepts like Tesco Express which tide over the inhabitants of the cartier.You hear that Berlin? I think it’s time to reconsider your strict “no shopping on Sunday policy” and yes I know you can go to the train stations if it’s really urgent but I just say Phooey to that!

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In a la Munde, Pasta Cooking School, Kreuzberg

June 1, 2011 2 Comments


Here’s how I thought In a la Munde worked, you get a pasta making demonstration, have a go at getting flour under your nails yourself, before sitting down for dinner that someone has cooked for you.

Here’s how it actually works: 3 groups are made, one each for the appetizer, main course and dessert, all of them with pasta.  Each group is then given a clipboard with a recipe, is introduced to their workbench, ingredients and get cooking. Uli (pronounced Ooolleeee) trundles about in her red wooden clogs and generously doles out encouraging words and noises.

Initially I succumbed to a bout of awkwardness, as I stood shoulder to shoulder with my pasta partner, Yasmine, going over the recipe.  It felt a bit like when my yoga teacher unexpectedly announces it’s time to practice hand stands with a buddy and you dart furtive glances to the people on your right and the left, trying to ‘blink‘ the right decision.  

Lucky for me, Yasmine turned out to be entirely normal.  Even better she gives Persian cooking classes at Goldhahn & Sampson.  And she will cook a Persian dinner for you at her home, for 2-8 people, €49 a head (let me tell you, I can not wait to organize an evening for my girlfriends there!).  Any shyness I might have felt quickly dissipated when it dawned on me around 9pm that if we didn’t get the food made, we weren’t going to eat!

The prospect of going hungry, bonded us somewhat and catapulted us into familiarity.  We worked well together but faced with recipes we had seen for the first time, an unfamiliar kitchen and of course the challenge of making pasta (which actually, turned out not to be that challenging after all) it took until 10:30 to sit down to our first course of ravioli with brown butter and sage.  We inhaled the dish and showered the two girls who had made them with compliments.  I think that even if I had not been ravenous, I would have found that ravioli delicious.

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