Ottenthal, Wiener Schnitzel, Charlottenburg

If you’ve visited this site frequently enough, you’ll know that my husband is Viennese.  Which means he is a terrible snob about pastries and schnitzel.  (I’ve told you right? That on our first weekend away, he spent an afternoon educating me on Viennese cakes and cafes, slapping the fork out of my hand because I wasn’t pacing myself adequately for our adventures in excess - how I ask you? Can you not fall for such an original approach to wooing?)

We’ve made our way through many a schnitzel in Berlin, me always deferring to his expertise on the subject of schnitzel “This one’s pretty good, right?” I ask as we slice through schnitzel after schnitzel.

There is always some reason why it doesn’t measure up; there is no volcanic bubbling of the breaded outside, it isn’t thin enough, it isn’t big enough, on and on.

I’m glad he wasn’t with me the other night when I had a schnitzel at Austria in Kreuzberg (although I think it’s inspired that they offer a ‘damen’ portion), it was draped over the potato salad making it warm and breaded outside of the schnitzel soggy (It wasn’t much cheaper than Ottenthal either, €17 compared to €19 at Ottenthal).

In his expert opinion, the schnitzel at Ottenthal is as good as it gets.  Coming in second place, the schnitzel at Brasserie Desbrosses in the Ritz and in third place Lutter & Wegner.  Worldwide award for best schnitzel goes to Figlmüller of Vienna.  A place to worship at the altar of thin, breaded and fried.Which brings me to this point, Ottenthal is not a schnitzel restaurant, it is an Austrian restaurant.  A rather fine Austrian restaurant.  One that the Michelin Guide has rated as having good value  and being charming. In the winter, a lot of the ladies wear fur and the men tend to wear a jacket (no tie).  Mozart, that other famed Austrian export, plays and there is even a plaque commemorating him, with a long-stemmed melancholic rose draped over it.  It sounds absurdly kitsch to see it described that way when in fact its elegant and somewhat stark.

I’ve eaten other things at Ottenthal, like tafelspitz (before I knew what it was, boiled meat, with sides like creamed spinach, roast apple (but still boiled meat in broth, can’t eat that unless I’m recovering from an illness).  Mostly I get the schnitzel (he always gets the schnitzel).  It’s dear, €19 but it organic veal and it comes with a large side of exceptionally good potato salad and a lamb’s lettuce salad.  Hrabi always has his with a bottle of Almdudler - the national soft drink of Austria. Read more of this post

Perfetto Supermarkets in Karstadt Department Stores, Berlin

Premium ↑

KaDeWe Foodhall           FrischeParadies

Galeries Lafayette Food Hall

Perfetto at Karstadt       Galeria Food Hall         LPG (organic)         Bio Company (organic)

Rewe                Kaiser’s           Ullrich (the zoo branch is open on Sunday!)         Edeka Group       Mitte Meer

Lidl           Netto         Aldi       Penny Markt

Budget ↓

More and more, I’m thinking that what you need for a successful dinner party is a generous spirit.  A host (ess) trembling with trepidation over whether you like the salmon mousse (or these days clarified salmon agar agar jelly with charcoal powder and botargo shavings) is an instant mood killer.

Lighting is more important than how many components your dessert has and whether it’s served on slate with tear drop shaped smears that look like miniature people didn’t heed the CAUTION WET FLOOR signs and slipped and slid to their peril (the slate manufacturer is now being sued).Last night I went to dinner party hosted by Caroline and Tobias of the Thyme Supper Club.  They could give classes on dinner parties.  There’s faint music, filling in any lulls in conversation - not that there are many of those as the couple separate and move around the guests acting like a light wind helping the tinder catch.We make our way through Prosecco, white wine then red and finally port to go with the cheese: Comté, Stichelton (on sale at Kollwitzplatz Saturday Farmers market Caroline tells me), Taleggio & Cheddar.I promise to invite them round to our house in the new year.  As I write this I think I will try to emulate their style then simultaneously I think of turning a Simon Hopkinson recipe I read for a prune and Armagnac custard into a tart - maybe with some sort of praline or a bruleed top, or a scoop of home-made ice cream and some jelly…that apple jelly I made at my last dinner party having been a huge success…Bah! Who am I kidding, I’m a long way from dinner party harmony but going to a really good one always inspires me.

I’ve got just the place to do all my shopping for it: the Perfetto Supermarkets at Karstadt.  This may just be as close as I will ever get to finding a Berlin equivalent to my beloved Waitrose.  As with all Berlin supermarkets, they should call in some Brand Consultants to do away with cluttered inconsistent logos and definitely some interior decorators specializing in lighting because there are some alarmingly murky corners where I can’t make out the small print on the back of the packets (or maybe that’s my impeding age). Read more of this post

Kochhaus Delivers

On Thursday night, the buzzer rang. Thinking it was a delivery for a neighbour, I let them in.  My name was said, a paper to be signed was thrust forward and two large bags were handed over.  I frantically flipped through the empty rolodex in my head trying to find the words to say “This is not for me!” But the man was already gone.

Then I remembered, the email from Kochhaus letting me know they would be sending over some food.  I was sceptical about the concept but nothing like a load of free stuff to change your mind.  Ha!  No, I’m kidding (kind of, you might think the guy who sent over a drink, sitting at the end of the bar is a total sleaze but secretly you’re pleased that he went to the trouble because even from way down there he thinks you are wonderful - that or he has money to burn and he’s been pulling that stunt all night hoping someone will bite.)Kochhaus is doing in Berlin what premium online supermarkets  in London have been doing for years: thinking up a recipe, photographing it in a flattering light so that it gets your juices going, working out portion sizes and sending the food over.  By providing this service in Berlin (where most bricks and mortar supermarkets look like they’ve been hit in the face with a sack of ugly and the idea of an online service shopping service seems decades away) Kochhaus have found their niche.A few things niggle me, namely an over reliance on the stove top (I use my oven where I can to avoid smelling like a line cook) and that their meat and two veg approach means you end up using a lot of pans.  Although I was thinking that perhaps if they had sent me over a pasta bake scenario, I might feel hard done by whereas the way they are building up the meal there is more value in all the individual parts. Read more of this post

DUDU, Pan Asian Food, Mitte

I’ve never hankered after one of those classic beige and brown Louis Vuitton totes, the ones that never go on sale and purportedly out of fashion. Not wanting a Louis Vuitton bag in Berlin is no biggie because obvious brand names (unless they’re vintage or second-hand, in which case they are ok) are avoided and ostentatious displays are in very bad taste, except in some parts of former West Berlin where girls in their twenties still wear pearl studs in their ears.  But from where I came, London, everyone wanted one.  No sooner had you scraped enough money together to buy the (cheaper) Marc by Marc Jacobs, an actual Marc Jacobs being the price of rent (although I do prefer the cheaper brand) then the season would change and it would be out with zips and in with something else.  (I don’t miss shopping for sport, or happiness, or whatever it was I was doing in London one little bit.  Although I admit that when I first moved here, it used to freak me out that the shops were - still are closed on Sundays.)All this to say, that even though I might deride those that have / want LVS bags I still love the guides.

Yes they do guide books, something you wouldn’t know unless you’ve braved the two behemoth security men that flank the door (if you have the chance, visit the gift shop at the Musee des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and browse at your leisure).  I discovered them quite by accident when I snuck into the Louis Vuitton Shop in Selfridges (much less scary to visit a concession).  I was intrigued, the European guide came as a box set only so I chose New York guide and it was like having a friend show me the city.  It wasn’t, as I had feared, filled with over priced, over hyped restaurants but with real jewels of the city.  Through LV New York I discovered Rice to Riches, a pickle shop (possibly this one), Shake Shack (oh I could so have a burger, curly fries and a frozen custard right now!).  It was a great trip, my husband was so impressed that I was such a local never noticing the thin chocolate box covered book I kept looking at.

In the LV Berlin Guide Dudu is listed, Transit and Kuchi aren’t.  I’ve been twice, both times for lunch.  I went for the set lunch each time.  First time I had a seaweed salad followed by a large sushi rice roll, filled with panko coated shrimp.  Second time, a soft rice paper roll and then again a large roll.  There are other things on the menu besides large rolls but I haven’t tried them yet since I can’t resist the €8 menu.  Going by those rolls, I imagine it’s all good.  Which considering their tiny kitchen (so tiny, that on one occasion I spotted veg prep being done in the hallway of the school above the restaurant) is impressive.

Don’t go by the picture on their homepage, in fact think the opposite.  As opposed to a blindingly white restaurant, you will be sitting in a cosy room, sharing communal tables and benches.  Service is very friendly.  In the summer everyone crowds into the small terrace in front of the restaurant, among the birdcages the potted plants and dark bamboo screens blocking out the traffic of Torstrasse.

Dudu
Torstr. 134
10119 Mitte
T. 030 51736854
www.dudu-berlin.de

Steamed Apple Pudding (& trying to learn German)

The women’s toilette at Nopi is all mirrored, the door, the walls, everything. When you wash your hands and look at your reflection in the mirror you see yourself (obviously and hopefully) but behind your reflection, is another smaller you and another and another. I feel my brain’s mental eye expand until what it perceives is so large the edges of the picture wobbles, the picture implodes and then contracts into a tunnel, me hurtling through it into the tiny pinprick at the end before resetting to normal leaving an unsettling shadow of what just happened, in a fraction of a second.

I think German is having the same effect on me. Like a never-ending deck of cards, each with an answer, all furling out and laying on their backs, information bared as far as my eye can see and then just as quickly, *thup*, they get sucked back in, into a neat stack, contents impenetrable.When I say it’s hard to learn German people say, “Yes, the verb is at the end.” But where the verb is hanging out equates to a little Chihuahua nipping at my ankles, when the real problem is that I am locked in a cage with a hungry tiger.

Before melodrama overtakes me completely, let me explain (and also say to you all who have learned German as a 2nd language - hell even as a 1st language: RESPECT!).My grievances can be outlined in 3 main points:

1. The words are long. You will no doubt say to me “Ah yes, but they are mostly made up of words strung together, like ‘kugelschreiber’ which means pen - and could be translated as ‘ball writer’ because of the little roller ball in ball point pens. And I will answer back to you ‘Gänseblümchen’ which means ‘daisy’ but translates as ‘goose flower’.

And also,that my ability to stay concentrated is much like my ability to hold my breath under water, finite. So when I am confronted with something like this: ‘Verständlichwerweise, denn der Vogel war schon von Generationen von Köchen, die hier ein-und augegangen waren, getriezt worden -…”* my brain gives up and goes out for a smoke after the first word, which I think might mean ‘understandably’.

2. The capitals in written sentences are totally distracting, like visual Stolperstein (Stumbling Stones) without meaning. Equivalent to a news reader wearing a bright red clown nose. Anyone prone to distraction (me) will immediately think WTF? and not hear the news. Spoken German has a lot of consonants bunched up together (Someone help that man! He’s choking! Oh, no - my bad, he’s just speaking German), dipping down into vowels and then back up again. So that if I do manage to utter a sentence, I end up feeling like one of the Von Trapp kids crossing the Alps. It’s physical. Olivia Newton John would have not trouble working out to it.

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Schmidt’s Deli Deluxe, Mitte

I kept thinking about Spaceballs (the Mel Brooks parody of Star Wars) when I heard this deli had opened. Maybe it’s the Schmidt* (coming from blacksmith) compared to ‘the Schwartz’ (a Mel Brooks combination of the words ‘schwarz’ meaning black in German and ‘schwantz’ being the Yiddish slang for penis).  Not exactly linear thought, I’ll give you that, but that’s the way my saturated-with-TV as-a-teenager-brain works (when let’s face it, TV was SO much better!).There are definitely some oddball factors at play here.  Like Schmidt’s is in a unnaturally quiet pocket of Mitte (not peaceful like where Alpenstueck is, more dead, like the people have left the city type feeling).  It’s next to The Dude hotel (I’m not going to succumb to the obvious jokes on this one but by all means, you go ahead).  In the window are two white chairs, a white table on top of which sit two highly polished metal domes, the kind which waiters used to remove from your plate with a flourish to reveal still warm, albeit small portions of Nouvelle Cuisine some 40 years ago. (Points out of 10 for deli relevance? 0)

There is a neon in the window (which is sadly turned off, 4/10), when I step into the blasting hot room of the deli I am met by a woman in a stiff Iron Chef-Cat Cora type jacket, in fact come to think of it, this lady could have been her older sister, with blond hair shorn in a neat and orderly bob; worn with a hairband, which she pushed forward to make a little bump of hair.  Cat Cora’s older sister and a young chef manned the space behind the counter, which housed a compact kitchen and the till.  On the other side was a red dining room that was off bounds, serving as the breakfast room for The Dude hotel.  You could perch on one of the high three tables under a large black and white painting of a man eating and a woman farting - no smiling (but doesn’t that smile look like she’s just let one rip?). Read more of this post

Coledampf’s & Companies, Kitchen Accessories & Cafe, Kreuzberg

Coledampfs third store (this one with partners) in Berlin, is in Kreuzberg and it is incredible!  I’d heard about its imminent birth for some time but I just though “bah”.  I never imagined something of this retail magnitude was what they had in mind.  I would stick it up there with Williams Sonoma and Sur La Table.  A toned down European version of course because no one can compete (or tries to) with the volume, the ‘oh so shiny and new’ and bright displays that instantly convince you (me) that: Yes, you (me) absolutely must have the electric Zoku popsicle maker with accompanying book. (Even though the last time I ate a popsicle, I still had some of my milk teeth in.) of the American market. This Coledampf doesn’t have the variety that the Savignyplatz shop has, notably absent are plastics (spatulas, Tupperware, moulds).  Instead there is a stunning collection of de Buyer pots and pans; chefy tools, about 10 formats of conical strainers; glassware; dishes; German wines, from the 13 growing regions; a tower of Cynthia Barcomi’s aluminum bakeware; and books - 1 shelf of which is in English.There is a focus on craftmanship, environmental sustainability and regional goods.  As I understand it, Coledampf’s & Companies is a collaboration between the big, the good and the virtuous; bread from Beumer & Lutum; the culinary bookstore Kochlust; a range of edible products from Essbare Landschaften, I gathered that they are the ones that run the cooking school; something (opinion maybe?) from Garcon magazine.I don’t really need the partner credentials, it could be a collaboration between the 7 dwarfs and I would still love it.  The enormous space (500 sq ft), the large communal tables, the freedom to amble along slowly and peruse the contents of the shop without being verbally tackled by an exasperated sales person that wants to know if ‘you’re just wasting their time or what?!?!’.

But the best part?

You can order food.There is a cafe on the ground level and a warm food cafe upstairs.  From memory, the menu upstairs went something like this: a celeriac soup, a pan-fried salmon, a regional duck dish, a pear dessert. Entirely seasonal, with not a raspberry or asparagus spear insight to dilute credibility.  With dinner at Renger Patzsch not far off on the horizon of the evening.  I ordered a soup and a dessert.  The kitchen is open and has some super strength extraction because although the salmon was coming out with perfectly crispy skin, I couldn’t smell it being cooked.  The chefs plate up on the open pass, as professional as if it were the pass at Maze, then *ping* goes the little silver bell and the order is expedited to the table. (Mains are in the €12-€15 range but look to be worth every euro.) Read more of this post

Sale e Tabacchi, Italian, Mitte / Kreuzberg border

George Vernon Hudson, I don’t like you. So it’s 1898 and things are a bit dim, you don’t get enough daylight hours after work to pursue your entomological pursuits, I get it. But why, pray tell, are we still doing this? This being ‘daylight-saving-time’. I’m no scientist but my instincts tell me that if the days are getting shorter in the winter anyhow, perhaps if we are going to be screwing around with time, we should be doing it the other way around so that we add an hour of sunshine rather than subtract one? I don’t know, just and idea.My other big gripe with the lack of light is the murky yellow photos I will now be posting on the website. Speaking restaurants, I would hazard a guess that a good 70% of Berlin establishments are closed for lunch opening only at 6:30 for dinner. Meaning my pictures look like they were taken by a cusk eel, which is a misleading name because it’s not an eel but a fish which has been spotted some 8,000 meters below sea level, get it? Really deep underwater hence the dark pictures?! (David Lebovitz wrote a great guide to blogging, in it he quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald who said “An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes.” Too late, silly is the fabric from which I was cut.).Back to the review. I’ve been to Sale e Tabacchi a few times, usually when friends suggest it as an eating spot. The only colour present in the front and back dining room is blue, the blue of the Sale e Tabacchi sign. There are no paintings, the large half orbed lights that line the walls and ceiling are so striking, I can’t imagine any art that would stand up to them. The waiters are all male, in floor length white aprons, they address everyone in Italian, and if you don’t order properly (Primo, Secondo and so on) they just hover over you, pen poised until you (I) succumb to the guilt and hastily add a dish.

For all that authenticity in decoration, waiter behavior and menu, I don’t like the food. I was trying to figure out why that is last week. As a table of 15, I had a good overview over what the dishes looked like (good) and everyone seemed to be enjoying them. I ordered 2 starters. Octopus with celery (€11.50), which was bland, the only highlight being the inspired addition of celery which I had never encountered before. Then I had the vitello tonnato (€10.50), which came straight from the fridge and whose puddle of tuna sauce was too reminiscent of something else. There were two slices of seedy lemon so mangled, they looked like they’d been fished out of a bin somewhere when the kitchen ran out of lemons (I’m sure that’s not the case but that was what the story their appearance told me).

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