Kushinoya, Japanese Fried Food, Charlottenburg

Don’t think I am unaware that I am not fulfilling my self-declared duty of being a Foodie in Berlin, I am.  (Truthfully, I was made aware by my husband who said. “What’s up with your blog, you haven’t posted much about Berlin lately.”)

I have plenty of new places that I have been eating at and want to share.  It’s just that I’ve been travelling a lot.   Then, when I returned to Berlin, it was like someone spiked (is spiking as I type) the weather god’s drink.  It’s glorious, opera glorious (as in, am inspired to burst into song).  That godawful humidity that plagued us all summer is gone to be replaced with honey hued sunshine and baby blue skies.  It’s hard to stay in doors with weather like that and walking around Berlin the last week or so, it seems everyone agrees.Kushinoya was a tip from a Japanese girl I met at a wedding in the Cotswalds a couple of weekends ago.  It was one of those rare occasions where instead of squirming in vain for a conversation topic which would then fizzle out and die in a matter of seconds, we found ourselves gushing animatedly within minutes.  The common thread, food.  She is Japanese, lived in London for a while , then moved to Köln with her husband.  She misses great food, I miss great food.

“How’s Berlin?” She asked

Amazing!”

“How is the food?”

“Meh.” (BTW Margue, I’ve totally stolen that expression from you, it is so great at expressing a disappointment so profound, you can’t even be bothered to extrapolate on the subject. Genius.)

“We have a restaurant in Berlin that we love!” she enthused.

“Hold on, let me get a pen…”

“It’s fried food on a stick.” she continued. 

Fried food on a stick?

Fried food son a stick! (Kushiage) Read more of this post

Dinings, Sushi & Japanese Tapas, London

My sister and I were reading on Avlaki beach in Athens the other day when she looked up and said, “I’m trying to figure out if I’m a fox or a hedgehog?” ” Heh? What’s that now?” “Well,” she continued “the ancient Greek poet Archilochus said ‘the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing’ Isaiah Berlin (his real name, not making it up) expanded on the idea in an essay.”

“Well I’m definitely a fox!” I declared.  I’d already penciled my character into this column when I had read Sasasunakku’s recipe for Toffee & Pear Spice Cake which referred to Sarah Wilson’s blog post on ‘scanners’.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in my choice of reading material, the magazines I’ve brought along on this trip include: Apartamento, Bon Appétit, Oh Comely and the FT Magazines.  The books I have read this summer are King Abdullah’s, Our Last Best ChanceThe Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh and on to Michael Caine’s, An Elephant in Hollywood.  (There’s a point to all this, I promise.)

I was reading that Michael Caine is an avid gardener who loves the British countryside. But he can’t stand the long damp winters. Solution: he has a sprawling country home in Britain and winters with his family in Miami. Ping! Went the light bulb over my head, that would be perfect!  That way, I could opt out of 6 months of snow and sorrows in Berlin and the lack of dim sum, sushi and good cheap eats and love it instead for what it does have, turning a blind eye to what it doesn’t do for me.  (Hmmm, I’ve just realised this is probably what French men think as they build up their pyramid of wife, mistress & alternative sexpot - managing to love the first two simultaneously!)

Here is how those first 3 paragraphs relate to Dinings.  When in Berlin, Dinings (followed by Yauatcha and Barrafina) is probably the restaurant I miss the most.  And nothing, nothing, nothing even comes close to it.  To the point that I find sashimi in Berlin so lackluster that I don’t bother.  (Yes I know about Sasaya in Prenzlauerberg and yes, the people who work there are indeed ‘really Japanese’ and the quality is good but it’s too traditional for my taste.)
I love Dinings because:

1. They make stuff I can’t. I will never get the quality of fish they have or be able to prepare it as well as they do.
2. It’s simple stuff and that is the hardest food of all to pull off because you can’t masque imperfections
3. It’s a most plain, un-embellished place. The restaurant is in a basement on a residential street behind Edgeware road. There is nothing on the walls, the seating is wooden, the tables are small, and the ceiling is low. One side has a small window where you can see people’s feet as they walk by. And it doesn’t matter at all because the food is so captivating.
4. This one is kind of a sub-point to 3. It’s not a reverential place; you don’t go there to genuflect at the altar fine dining. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to how I feel when I eat at home, except I’ve got no washing up to do.
5. They have flavor combinations that I love, relying a lot on sour whether through lime, lemon, yuzu or even vinegar and mostly doing away with perennial (and much too salty) soy and the neon wasabi. Read more of this post

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 145 other followers