Hungry in Berlin

by Ed Ward

As the tourists will tell you, eating in Berlin is a hit-and-miss proposition. Restaurants line our streets, but most of them are mediocre to terrible. The local dining guides, published by the bi-weekly listings guides, are pay-for-play: you get to write your own review if you buy an ad. Plus, they’re in German.

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But yeah, we want to tell the tourists, just imagine what it’s like living here, 24/7, 365 days a year. Venture into our supermarkets and you’ll be underwhelmed by the quality and variety of goods on offer. If you eat meat, you’ll notice that most cuts of beef are unavailable, and so is lamb and veal. Salt-water fish and shellfish are a rumor. If you’re a vegetarian, it’s even worse. Green vegetables you’ve taken for granted your whole life are simply unavailable, or only sporadically so, as are many kinds of dried beans, decent tofu, and seitan.

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So we venture out to restaurants, and get fed German food. German-”Asia” food, German Indian food (aka Pink Glop), German Thai food missing chiles, German Turkish food, German Italian food, pre-packaged sushi (and forget the entire rest of the range of Japanese food), and German German food laced with MSG.

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It doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s why we started this blog.

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You can — and we do — cook genuine, flavorful food here. Ethnic food with authentic ingredients, down-home food with fresh vegetables, food which reflects the seasons (as German food doesn’t, really), and food which might scare our neighbors, but satisfies the souls of us and our friends. There are ethnic shops here, weekly markets with interesting things, little places that have the good stuff in the back because they assume it’s only the homies who are interested. There are mail-order sources for really rare ingredients. And there are little tricks a lot of people are unaware of: did you know that wholesale markets are required by law to offer things for retail? There are Indian, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Italian wholesalers here in Berlin that sell mostly to restaurants — but will sell to you.

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You can also get weekly deliveries of farm-fresh produce, thanks to the federal government’s support of organic farmers in Brandenburg, and a huge range of Southeast Asian herbs and vegetables, thanks to Dutch farmers of Vietnamese extraction. We’ll tell you where, when, and how.

We’ll also report on the small number of absolutely authentic restaurants, where you may have to cultivate the owners before they’ll give you what you want, but our initial emphasis is on cooking at home. In a lot of cases — Chinese food, for one — that’s the only way you’re going to get what you’re looking for.

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Maybe some day Germany will join the Anglophone world — and Southern Europe — in an appreciation for good food. Berlin, in particular, has a terrible history with food because its outlying surroundings have never been able to produce much in the way of variety due to poor farming techniques and bad soil. It doesn’t have to be that way, of course, especially nowadays. But until this city catches up to what we want, we’ll keep you informed.

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After all, no matter what time of day it is, it’s almost time to eat.

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