Hungry in Berlin

A few years ago, a friend who was writing a novel asked me what Americans eat at Christmas. I told her it was much like Thanksgiving, with turkey often the centerpiece. So how do they cook it? she asked next. And, fool that I am, I volunteered to show her.

But…where to get a bird? Oh, she replied, that’s easy: Rogacki.

Now, I’d never heard of the place, but she scampered down there and ordered a French turkey, never frozen, to be delivered on such-and-such a date, and then, when the day came, she met me there. It’s on Wilmersdorfer Str., number 145-6, just above the pedestrianized shopping area, very close to the Bismarckstr. U-Bahn station. In fact, the steps leading out of the station have ads for Rogacki on them. We went inside, and I was enthralled. I’d never seen so much extraordinary food in one place in Berlin — not even at KaDeWe, not even in the days before its food department went south, where it remains to this day, a normal Berlin supermarket on steroids.

A nice man with a moustache took her receipt and soon afterwards, we left with our bird, of which more later. And now that it’s getting to Thanksgiving again, I’ve been asked a couple of times where one gets a decent turkey in this town, and have recommended it. Just to make sure I wasn’t on crack, I went back there today to check the place out again.

Rogacki’s been around since 1928, when it opened as a smoked-fish stand in Wedding, before it moved to the present location, and I doubt its philosophy has changed much. It began as a fish market, and it’s still the best fish selection I’ve seen in a city which pretty much disdains salt-water fish. Just about everything that’s in season is available there, including oysters, parrot-fish, racasse, octopus, king crab legs (at a whopping €56.50 a kilo), and scallops (€48 a kilo). In addition there’s an astonishing refrigerator case filled with various fish, largely smoked on site, from such obvious things as Schillerlocken and peppered herring to preparations like jellied eel, shellfish Sülze, and gravad halibut. Herring connoisseurs will faint at the number of types of matjes and other herring, not to mention pickled herring and Rollmops.

But fish is far from all that’s on sale there. There’s a poultry counter, at which I didn’t see quail or pheasant (but I couldn’t get too close to it because of the line of customers), but plenty of duck, goose, French corn-fed chickens (bright yellow), and huge turkey breasts. (Whole turkeys are presumably by order only, or else are in the back). Next to it is game: venison as stew-meat, steaks, and roasts; wild boar roasts, ostrich, and rabbits already larded and ready for the oven. Across from that is a pork and beef counter at which I spied French piece de boef (a type of steak), as well as several varieties of sausage. The real sausage counter is around the corner: more types of Italian salami than I’ve ever seen, hams of every variety (including one that looks like jambon persilée, but bears the label Rosmarinschinken), and various pates and rillettes.

Keep walking and you’ll find a small wine counter, a fair selection of cheeses (nothing exotic, although there were some nice-looking Époisses), and a small but action-packed bread and pastry counter with such exotica as Toskanabrot (with a densely-herbed crust), Ponybrot (no idea), and a Pyrennean bread which looked pretty good, La Pave Perene. There’s also a wide selection of German breads by BioBackhaus.

All of this, however, is nothing next to the real draw: the Stadtküche. Since you have to stand at a table, I guess it counts as an Imbiss, but it’s got both the Schlemmerecke, with loads of cooked specialties, and the Antipasti Ecke, with pasta, “toasts,” and Matjes. The line is scary, but they apparently process customers fairly quickly, and the food looked good, which, given the numbers there to eat it, I guess it was. Some of the customers look like they’re there every day, and if you want a snapshot of bourgeois West Berlin, it’s in the faces of the folks at the tables, stuffing themselves.

There are plenty of places that can beat the cheese selection (including KaDeWe), but I doubt anyone in town can do a better job with the quality of the meat and fish. The various deli items can be found elsewhere, but I can’t think of anywhere that has all of what’s here in one place. None of it is inexpensive, of course, so I’m just as happy it’s across town.

Not that I didn’t succumb to temptation: over in the pork department were some extraordinary-looking salsiccie, what Americans call “Italian sausage,” a beast that’s almost impossible to find here. Four of them cost just under €4, and I’m about to start scouring my Italian-American cookbooks for something creative to do with them — or maybe just make my old standby for cold weather, pastafazool with sausage.

Oh, and that turkey? I realized I’d gotten myself into a jam, and very nearly panicked. There seemed to be about as many opinions on how to cook the damn thing as there were cooks. Brine or not brine? Rub or not rub? Finally, I realized that I was acting as a cultural representative as much as a cook and hauled out The Joy of Cooking and followed the directions.

Astonishingly enough, it was both simple and perfect. Sometimes easiest is best.

EW

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