Kroatien: das Glashaus ist transparent

I picked Glashaus out of the many, many Croatian restaurants in Berlin mostly because it was a good halfway point between our apartment and that of the friends we were meeting for dinner. Croatian restaurants aren't trendy, and I couldn't find any reviews of them in any local press. There are lots of reviews of Croatian places on Qype, but they all sound about the same: big portions!, low price! Like the pseudo-Argentine steak houses, Croatian restaurants in Berlin are frequented by a certain type of German who likes to eat a serious lot of meat, but doesn't much care about the quality, and doesn't want to pay a lot. I am quite certain low-quality meat doesn't define all Croatian food. Even the Wikipedia entry on Croatian food (once again, my Croatian cookbook is on the other side of the Atlantic) describes a diverse cuisine full of regional specialties. I did try to find one that distinguished itself from the others -- an organic Croatian restaurant or one that was slightly upscale or trendy -- with no luck.

So, Glashaus it was and really, there isn't much to say about it. It was fine. All of our meals came with a salad, which was, in all fairness, a little better than it had to be. A trio of grated carrots, fresh sauerkraut, and lightly pickled cucumbers on a bed of iceberg lettuce. Nothing to get all that excited about, but I have had worse salads here and the dressing was a nice oil and vinaigrette, not at all sweet as it frequently is. The meat, however, was pretty bad across the board: the "small" trio plate came with a pork steak, a turkey steak, and a couple cevapcici (it seems every letter of the alphabet offers an opportunity to enjoy these sausage-shaped patties), rice and french fries. My spicy pork stew (similar to a goulash) was full of mushy frozen peas and carrots, not to mention that it was way over salted. Next to the massive pool of stew were two servings of rice: one plain that tasted of bouillon cubes and one that was vaguely tomato-based and full of the same mushy frozen vegetables. The best dish of the night, ordered by our friend who has spent time in the Balkans and is a professed fan of Croatian restaurants (in their Berlin form), was a giant beef patty stuffed with a feta-like cheese and served with French fries. Not a great dish - better meat would help, as would homemade fries, and maybe a few spices, but the concept wasn't bad. While Glashaus doesn't offer any Croatian beer, they do have several Croatian wines on the menu. I tried two and neither was particularly good as they were both one-note wines (one of them could easily have been manischewitz), but I always like it when an "ethnic" restaurant makes an effort to showcase the wines (or beverages) of the country. The only Croatian desserts were Palatschinken (crepes) with ice cream. Not very exciting, and after a disappointing meal, we passed on them. Berlin-style Croatian restaurants are not the sort of place I started this "project" to discover, but because I'm so very dedicated, I slogged through Croatia. Now I'm just glad it's over. Cuba here I come.......

Glashaus
Lindenstrasse 29

Kolumbien: Hin und wieder

It seemed for a while like Colombia might have been done in by The Curse. Friends of ours live next to Tierra Colombiana, so it had been on my radar for a long time, but the last time we were there I noticed a "closed until further notice"-type of sign in the window. Hmmmmmmm. La Chiva, another Kreuzberg Colombian spot closed "temporarily" due to some kind of "technical difficulty." They kept pushing their reopening date back (a real hoot when you show up the day after the originally posted reopening date) and are as of this writing neither open (as far as I can tell) nor answering their phone (or should I say, responding to calls because they only have a cell phone with a message saying they'll call you back). Just as I was about to give up on Colombia entirely, I called Tierra Colombiana one more time and they had magically reopened. Maybe The Curse can bring a restaurant back to life, too?

As it happens, I know a little something about Colombian food. My parents lived in Colombia before I was born. I don't remember them ever cooking anything Colombian at home, so they can't have missed the food all that much, but we did occasionally eat at a local Colombian hole-in-the-wall. Also, I spent a summer as an exchange student in western Venezuela and while they fact that yo soy marachucha means I'm required to tell you that arepas are really Venezuelan, in all honesty the two countries have very similar cuisines. In my experience, Colombian restaurants in the US have a fairly uniform menu and this is basically what you'll find at Tierra Colombiana. Between three of us, we shared the Picada Mixta, a Bandeja Paisa, and Ajiaco Bogotano. The Picada Mixta is a plate of little fried things (empanadas, yuca, tostones (fried unripe plantains), and chicharrón (fried pork belly) with a little hot salsa for dipping. What to say...it was ok. The empanadas were a little greasy and bland and the salsa didn't have much heat or flavor. It's not a dish I would ever order again, though in all fairness, little fried bits are never my favorite. I had high hopes for the Bandeja Paisa - this is the national dish and any self-respecting Colombian restaurant should have it down. Wikipedia has this to say about the dish: "the main characteristic ... is the oversized amount of food and the wide variety of ingredients." Tierra Colombiana's version just didn't live up to this at all. It's not that I need or want to stuff myself silly, but this is peasant fare. It should be hearty and flavorful and fill you up so you can plow your Andean fields The chicharrón and chorizo were both good, if a little on the small side, but the beans were just wan. Sad, sad beans with very little flavor. Beans for a Bandeja Paisa need be cooked with a nice ham hock or the like and these beans were most definitely porcine-free. Tierra Colombiana has a surprising number of vegetarian options for a Colombian restaurant and I guess that's great, but they need to make a separate pot of beans for those dishes (with caramelized onion or something for a little flavor) and not force flavorless vegetarian beans on customers ordering the non-vegetarian Bandeja Paisa (ie, not the one with the soy patty). I hate to go on and on (really I do - I wish I had loved the place), but the rice was also sad. Great rice is harder to make than one might think, but this seemed dry and leftover, which just isn't acceptable. I will say that the Ajiaco Bogotano (a lightly creamy soup with chicken and potatoes, flavored with capers and guascas) was very decent. Not life changing, but a nice bowl of soup. To finish our Colombian feast, we shared a portion of Brevas con Arequipe y Queso or candied fig with arequipe (very similar to dulce de leche) and fresh cheese. This is just about three sweet bites and it's a nice, typically Colombian way to end the meal. Another point of excitement: Tierra Colombia offers three Colombian beers and a variety of Colombian rum and aguardiente. Unfortunately, in Germany of all places, Colombian beer isn't enough to overcome Tierra Colombiana's shortcomings.

Tierra Colombiana
Mittenwalder Str. 27

China: Gut für Berlin

I wish I had more to say about Selig, but I left feeling sort of uninspired. Selig features the cuisine of northwestern China and specializes in hand-pulled noodles (there is a live pulling demonstration on Saturday nights). I read This review a while back and it stuck with me, so that I was determined to ignore the recently added disclaimer that it might not be so good after all. It's my fault I guess.

The noodles themselves were very good, with a nice spongy bite, but the two noodle dishes that we shared were just alright. I left thinking: I could have made those dishes. Wasn't the stir-fry I made last week better?

The so-called Peking duck with someone's special sauce wasn't awful, although it was definitely not Peking duck, but rather a deep-fried duck breast (is deep-frying really necessary?). While it was nice to have a milder dish to balance out the spicier beef and vegetables we had also ordered, after several bites, I was left craving some kind of flavor direction. The beef and vegetables had a nice punch to it and the vegetables retained some crunch. It was by far the better dish, if it was a little over-sauced.

The big question is, would I go back to Selig? My dining companion said it was the best Chinese food she's had in Berlin, and it definitely is better than the average place (keeping in mind that this city is full of Imbisse with mountains of nasty, greasy noodles to be for just a few Euros). I probably wouldn't go out of my way to eat there again, but if I were in the area and craving a big bowl of noodles, I very well might. I was intrigued by the noodles with lamb and I didn't get to try the dumplings. It is undoubtedly better than most of the Chinese food on offer in Berlin, but, alas, nothing to get too worked up about.

Selig
Kantstrasse 51

Bosnien: das siebente Mal hat Charme

The Islamic Cultural Center of the Bosnians in Berlin is a little tricky to figure out, but seeing as I have a bizarre amount of dedication to this project, I have conquered it. After six unsuccessful attempts to eat something "authentically" Bosnian, I finally made it. I stumbled across the ICCBB's website when I was looking for someplace definitively Bosnian to eat. The problem with messy history, is that it makes it difficult to tell exactly what is Bosnian. I imagine at least some of the Balkan places in Berlin are run by Bosnians, but they could also be Albanian or Macedonian or Croatian. Of course it works the other way, as well. The Albanian place I visited could be run by ethnic Bosnians and some of the people involved with the ICCBB could have (had) Albanian passports. The country of Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to three ethnic groups: the Bosniaks, the Serbs, and the Croats. I'm pretty sure neither the Serbs or the Croats were represented at the ICCBB, but I did visit a Croatian restaurant and I'll do my best to find something Serbian if I ever make it to S. I can tell you that based on a little internet research and a few restaurant meals, Albania, Bosnia, and Croatia have similar cuisines. Clearly, this is tricky business, but I think the fact that I went to the center seven times suggests that I did at least try to find something legit. Whatever legit means.

It took seven tries to get a meal at the ICCBB because it isn't really a restaurant, but a mosque and cultural center. I'd like to tell you more about it, but the website is all in Bosnian. When I first found the website, the only part I was able to decipher was the address. So I went there, figuring that they might be able to point me in the direction of a "genuine" Bosnian restaurant. Unfortunately, it was closed, but there was a man fixing the front step so I asked him: is there anywhere I can find Bosnian food in Berlin? He beamed: here! His German was't great, but he showed me inside where there is a little cafeteria and a small store selling a few Bosnian products. This was just before Ramadan (see how long I've been at this?!) and he said that the cook had gone back to Bosnia, but if I came back after Ramadan, I would be able to eat in the cafe. So, in September, I tried to go for a late lunch, but the center was again closed and this time nobody was fixing the front step. Eventually, I was able (with the aid of an internet Bosnian-English dictionary) to figure out the schedule (M-Th, 4pm-8pm; F-Sa, 11am-10pm; Su, 10am-10pm). Off I went for an early dinner only to discover that food is only served on Fridays and Saturdays. I tried again on the next available Saturday only to discover that that week, food was available on Friday and Sunday. This went on a few more times, until a few Sundays back when we happened to be wandering around Kreuzberg, a friend suggested that since we were nearby we might as well check and see if the ICCBB was open. I was sure that the place would be locked up, but lo and behold there were lights on and a few people inside. I'd been fooled by these clues before, though, but when we peaked around the corner, people were moving around in the cafe area. With trepidation, I inquired: is it possible to eat something today? Yes, the man behind the counter said, we have cevapi (aka cevapcici). So, cevapi it was. Unlike the Albanian and Croatian cevapcici, these came served sandwich style on a toasted flatbread (Turkish pide) with some sliced onions and a big dollop of what I thought was yogurt cheese, but may have been kaymak. The sandwich presentation and the kaymak is really what set these cevapi apart from the others I've had. The kaymak (or whatever it was) was great. This is one of those condiments that elevates most any dish. I can't say that the cevapi were better than the others, but they weren't worse either. At 4 Euros, you could get a better kebab-type sandwich elsewhere in the neighborhood, but you would miss out on thrill of actually managing to eat actual food at the ICCBB. I have the feeling that if you could read Bosnian (and thus the website) or if you were lucky, you might stumble upon a really good event there featuring other interesting and definitely homemade Bosnian dishes. As it is, dining at the ICCBB does require some patience and/or luck. If you decide to check it out, go with a plan B (avoid the awful Santa Maria Mexican Diner around the corner on Oranienstrasse at all costs).

Islamic Cultural Center of the Bosnians in Berlin
Adalbertstrasse 94 (hinterhaus)

O Kanada: ein Land zu arm für echte Teller

I have nothing good to say about Ron Telesky Canadian Pizza. First and most importantly, the food is awful. Berlin isn't one of those towns where you can get a good slice of pizza just anywhere, but with a little trial and error, you can find decent pizza. I'm not even sure if Ron Telesky is better than the individual frozen pizzas you can buy at greasy Imbisse for 2 Euros. I have no problem with thin crust pizza, but floppy and soggy are not good qualities. Neither is greasy. Moreover, Ron is clearly using the cheapest ingredients one can possibly buy and this comes through in the flavor. Interesting toppings are supposedly Ron's thing, but on the night we visited, they had only a few options: marinara, pesto with mushrooms, mushroom-onion-bacon, and spicy (lots of different kinds of peppers), and a dessert pizza. Between the two of us, we sampled all four savory pies. The marinara and the mushroom-onion-bacon were the better of the four. Not that I would recommend them or go back for them, but they weren't completely disgusting. The pesto tasted of nothing but jarred pesto, which as you may know, tastes nothing like the real stuf, but oddly musty. The spicy pizza was so spicy it had no real flavor (this is not one of those situations where it's a relief to discover real heat in Berlin). As I may have mentioned, I do enjoy my sweets, but the dessert pizza (unimaginatively named "the Pothead") brown banana slices, scatalogical lumps of brownie, and scary congealed vanilla pudding was not remotely tempting. The German beer selection is perfectly adequate, but the only Canadian beer they had was blackberry-flavored Moosehead. Blackberry-flavored Moosehead?!

As if awful pizza isn't bad enough, everything about this place proclaims, "I don't care." The giant moosehead, which even the owner admits is the only really Canadian thing in this place is draped with a Canadian flag like a teenager had discarded a dirty shirt on the floor of his room. There are a few odd condiments on the counter - a spicy maple sauce in an old bottle (might work on the sweet potato pizza, but it certainly doesn't work with your more standard pizzas). "Homemade tabasco sauce" (tasting nothing like tabasco) and some kind of a honey mustard were both in crusty looking cups, like you might see at a party at some guy's first apartment. Ron Telesky isn't exactly dirty, but there is an overall dinginess that I don't enjoy when dining out. I can accept (although the environmentalist in me doestn't like it) that they only have paper plates, but the slices of pizza are much too big to fit on them (they aren't full size). As if this wasn't annoying enough, there are almost no tables or chairs at RT, so you end up perched on a tree stump on the sidewalk trying to balance your floppy slice of pizza on your knees, inevitably getting grease stains on your pants. You see, at RT, they are "totaly addicted to swing dancing" (not my spelling - the website is chock full of spelling errors and I'm not talking about words like colour) and twice a month they host a swing dance. We happened to visit on one of these nights, which could have been great. I like swing just fine, but a restaurant the size of a postage stamp (if it's dedicated to being a restaurant that is) does not get to do away with all of the tables. And, I'm sorry, but the decaying canoe on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant cannot seriously be considered a table, especially when they aren't providing big enough plates.

What is Canadian pizza, anyway? My pre-dining interest research turnedup this bizarre explanation. The German owner told me he lived in Canada for a while and worked at a pizza place specializing in non-traditional toppings. He brought the idea back here and decided to call it Canadian pizza. I'm certainly not Canadian and I find their flag-plastered backpacks absurd (if you don't want to be mistaken for a US American, don't act like one), but I think the Canadian embassy might want to take action here.

Ron Telesky Canadian Pizza
Dieffenbachstrasse 62

Chi-chi-chi-le-le-le, viva Chile!

As luck would have it, I got to the C countries in September and when a very lost Latin American studies major (especially one who spent a year in Santiago) thinks about Chile in September, she immediately thinks: 18 de Septiembre (Chilean independence day)! It took a bit of googling, but I managed to track los Chilenos en Berlin down and indeed, las fiestas patrias were to be celebrated at the Statthaus Böcklerpark in Kreuzberg. In Chile, the 18 de Septiembre is celebrated with rodeos, carnivals, dancing the the cueca (the national dance of coquettish handkerchief waving), barbecues and other traditional fare. At the fiesta in Berlin, only the rodeo was missing. The relatively small Böcklerpark was pack with well over 100 Chileans and friends of Chile. The park was lined with stands selling almost all the Chilean hightlights: choripan, a chorizo sausage in a bun topped with pebre (the ubiquitous Chilean condiment: think non-spicy salsa fresca); ceviche; asado (a selection of grilled meat) with ensalada chilena (tomatoes and mild white onions); empanadas de pino (minced beef) and queso; completos (Chilean hotdogs with the works - my favorite is a completo italiano with mayonaise, avocado puree, and chopped tomatoes); churrascos (thin slices of steak on a bun with melted cheese (called a Barros Luco after the former president) or avocado, mayo, and tomatoes), pastel de choclo (similar to shepherd's pie with a sweet (too sweet in my opinion - and many Chileans sprinkle extra sugar before eating. yuck) cornmeal topping), cakes and the fried pastry calzones rotos. Of course there were also stands selling pisco sours (really excellent ones), piscolas (pisco with coke), and Chilean wine.

After a year in Chile, I was unbelievably sick of the cuisine. It's not the most diverse cuisine and my host-mother wasn't a very good cook. That said, after a ten-year break, it was a lot of fun to eat my way through Chile in the middle of Berlin. With a few exceptions: the food was quite good. It's hard to go wrong with a choripan, hot off the grill. And the completo took me right back to the completeria near La Moneda, except that it was even better with a German Wiener. We skipped the cheese empanadas as they were never my favorites, but the pino was very good - of course it should have been made with hand-chopped meat, but the crust was just right. The ceviche was simple, but refreshing and spicy and the asado took me back to so many Sunday barbecues with my host family. The pisco sours were a little pricy at 5 Euros for a small glass, but they were so very delicious, nobody seemed to mind. As you can tell, we did a pretty good job of sampling just about everything. We did skip the paella (why?) and the pastel de choclo because I never could get behind that much sugar with my ground beef. I was a little disappointed in the dessert table. Most of them looked more German than Chilean, with the exception of pay de limon and the calzones rotos, but how is it that there wasn't any manjar (the Chilean word for dulce de leche) to be found? Not a single alfajor? Weeks later and I'm still craving it.

Kambodscha: Wir haben ein Gewinner

I really didn't want to move onto the C countries with Bolivia and Bosnia still uneaten, but Bolivia was a bust and Bosnia is proving to be particularly challenging. I was really excited about the Deutsche-Bolivianische Azzoziation's 25th Anniversary Festival, but unfortunately the September 15-18th listed on their Facebook page was a big lie (typo?). Such a bummer as this seems to have been the only opportunity in Berlin to eat Bolivian food. And I do love me a salteña. Bosnia is still coming, I promise....


Angkor Wat is a little off the beaten path (at least it's not a neighborhood that I frequent) in Tiergarten, a short stroll from the Brandenburg Gate. At least one reviewer found the decor "slightly more gaudy than the usual Asian restaurant" and while I wouldn't necessarily say that the restaurant has an understated look (multiple paintings adorn the walls, there are some lovely pieces of painted woodwork, and there is foliage), I found it to be very tasteful, cozy even (this reviewer has clearly never eaten Indian food in New York's East Village under the glare of ten thousand Christmas lights). So many restaurants in this town look exactly the same (and many serve near-identical menus -- if I see one more salad with Putenstreifen (strips of turkey meat) and bad balsamic dressing I might lose it); it's downright exhilarating to find a place with some personality, that isn't afraid to announce to the natives: here you can have a unique Cambodian experience. Amazingly enough, nowhere does Angkor Wat also claim to be a sushi restaurant or a Thai restaurant! These are Cambodian people cooking Cambodian food: it's refreshing to see, and delicious to eat.

Cambodian food is often described as being similar to Thai food, but less strongly and less complexly spiced. In my one Cambodian dining experience I found that to be true and my initial reaction was: in a city full of bad Thai food, this is a great restaurant, but now I don't know. I'd have to eat more Cambodian food to really be sure, but maybe there is a delicious subtlety in Cambodian food? Maybe I just haven't had a real Thai meal since I moved to Europe? In any case, the food at Angkor Wat is certainly not boring. We shared four appetizers-spring rolls, summer rolls, banana blossom salad, and a beef salad with toasted rice. The rolls were both good, but not particularly remarkable. The banana blossom salad, however was light and refreshing and the beef salad was excellent, with flavors reminiscent of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larb, if a slightly milder version. For entrees, we split an order for two of grill-it-yourself beef (if I was a better reviewer, I would remember the actual name of this dish) and a chicken stir-fry flavored with bergamot leaves (although a little internet research suggests that Bergamot is more of a Mediterranean plant, so maybe they were lime leaves???). Whatever they were, the chicken dish was simple, but with a very nice, lightly citrusy flavor. It was a good foil for our beef, which was richly marinated and just a little spicy. The beef was served with rice noodles, a vegetable salad with lots of mung beans, sliced peppers, and cucumbers, steamed rice, and various sauces. A little tabletop grill was placed in the center of the table and we cooked our own dinner (similar to Korean barbecue).

Angkor Wat is not the cheapest Asian restaurant in Berlin. Appetizers are in the 5-7 Euro range and entrees are closer to 15 Euros. Four appetizers and three entrees split between four diners left us all very full (we did eat every single morsel, including the radishes carved into roses and the goldfish carrot). While you certainly can have a cheaper Asian meal in this town, you'll have trouble find a place that (1) provides such a complexity of flavor and doesn't just bathe every single dish in coconut milk and (2) pays such close attention to detail. The food is served on nice plates (not nice as in expensive, but nice as in not boring sturdy white Ikea plates or the like). As soon as we were seated, our waitress brought us a welcome aperitif (some sweet liqueur) along with some shrimp chips (I loathe these, but the Germans do really seem to like them) and when we had finished eating, she brought us each a schnapps on a beautiful little tray. To top all of this off, after we had finished eating and all agreed we were too full for dessert, the chef came to our table to say hello and see how we enjoyed our meal. I must tell you that the chef is the most jolly, adorable man I have seen in a long, long time. This guy grins even when he is not smiling. We told him everything had been delicious, but we were too full for dessert, but disregarding our fullness, he said he had a new dessert and surely if he brought us two portions, we could manage to sample it. Out came two plates of sticky rice with pumpkin and coconut milk. Mango provides a better contrast to sticky rice, but pumpkin is pretty delicious too. My dining companions suggest that the free dessert was just a ploy - that the chef has heard of my curse and hopes that by appeasing me with sugar, I won't close his restaurant (in my defense, only six places (that I either visited or tried to visit have closed and they were for the most place not very good). I don't think that I have any control over my curse, but if I do, I can certainly be appeased with sugar, especially after a delicious meal.

Angkor Wat
Paulstraße 22