Berlin's Shawarma Currency

From the following moment...

Nicola equated everything we considered buying back to how many chicken shawarmas (= €2.5) she could've eaten instead.  I.e. Entry to a museum for €10 = four shawarmas, that's a deal breaker.

The shawarmas come from a Moroccan restaurant called Rissani and are loaded with chicken, fried potato wedges (!) , a big blob of grated carrot, cabbage and beetroot, tomato, cucumber, yoghurt, chilli and tabouli. The quantity of these that we consumed is testament to how bloody amazing they are!

The Street Food but not really Street Food Trail 

We headed off one morning to hunt down some of Berlin's renowned cheap eats and started off with a shawarma, of course.

After that it was off to Angry Chicken for some Korean style street food.  We had a bowl of the So So Angry Chicken that was a bit too sweet, not crunchy enough and not hot enough for us.

We then made our way to Curry 36 to try Berlin's famed currywurst.  After so much hype, I think this is up there with one of the big food disappointments of our lives.  A low point of our marriage even.

Too much sauce and not enough curry-ness.  We just don't get it.

Those two meals above could've been two more shawarmas.

But!! We finished with a bang (after waiting in a queue for twenty minutes).  A döner from what may be considered a Berlin institution, Mustafa's, rounded the trail off nicely.

Butcher Dinner 

This meal was, hmm, interesting.

It was from an old school Butcher in Friedrichshain that we were very excited about eating at.  After receiving a hot tip, I think we just managed to order the wrong things.  Which tends to  happen when you just point and hope.

Nix had the first schnitzel of the trip and was disappointed by it however the red cabbage that came with it was good .  The mashed potatoes that tasted like Deb were a nice touch too.

Rather foolishly I let Nicola ordered for me and ended up with pasta drowned in the same tomato sauce used on currywurst with chopped up sausage through it.  Not good!

The Bocks were decent though.

Perth > Berlin 

Two burritos each in Berlin that came without cheese and were pretty bland were disappointments.  Based on two burritos I think we can safely say that Perth makes a better burrito than Berlin.  Fact.

Late Night Snacks 

Any city where you can get a great kebab at 3am on a Monday night is a favourite in our eyes!

Food overall in Berlin was bloody cheap and bloody good.  Some nights we considered making dinner back at the hostel but when you can eat well for just over €5 it didn't seem worth it.

The satisfaction felt from the final meal of our trip is summed up pretty well in this photo.

Rissani Shawarma Count - 7

Pug Sightings - 7

Barely Finding Banksy in Berlin

This post pretty much speaks for itself.  All that I'll say is that we discovered most of it on one afternoon whilst searching out some of Banksy's work, which you see below was quite fruitless.

Cool shiz

Some massive wall pieces

Stuff by an  Israeli group 

All from some hipster area in Friedrichshain

Note the Ned Kelly stencil 

Animals? 

And this was the favourite...

The Beers of Berlin

Whilst Berlin doesn't have a massive beer scene, we still managed to get our hands on a few beers from up and coming craft brewers, a few quaffers from traditional ones and most importantly, some Berliner Weisse. 

Berliner Weisse

We sat down one night and had three Berliner Kindl Weisse side by side by side.  The unsweetened was OK, probably not enough sour for our liking, but the two syruped versions, raspberry and woodruff, were way too sweet.  This is Nana beer at its worst!  And at the supermarket you can buy your unsweetened stubbies and a packet of syrup pods that come in all sorts of naff flavours to DIY. 

Berlin's saving (beer) grace though was the Potsdamer Weisse by Braumanufactur.  With just enough sour to it and a really dry finish, you could easily drink an s load of this on a 40 degree day.  We found two bottles in an organic supermarket on the outskirts of Berlin and carried them around with us for a full day only to have some bastard at our hostel decide to pinch one of the bottles! 

Unfortunately though, and unlike Cologne and Düsseldorf, the production of Berlin's regional beer speciality seems to be a dying art and it is hard to see it being rekindled.  These Berliner Weisse don't hold a candle to Feral's Watermelon Warhead. 

Craft Beer Journey

We devoted one day and about 15 kilometres of walking to searching out a few of Berlin's apparent beer hotspots. 

First of all we hit up Das Meisterstück for Maisel & Friends' Chocolate Bock and Jeff's Bavarian Ale, and red cheese sausage with potato salad.  While the beers, sausage, concept and place itself were all great, that's where the good news stopped.  The waitress pretty much didn't want to know us,  leaving us waiting for at least 15 minutes before there was any sort of recognition, and then as we were leaving gave us a token "I hope you enjoyed it here, have a great day" in a last ditch attempt for a tip (which in protest we didn't give - that will show them!).  And then to cap it all off, the bar owner cracked the shits when we didn't want to pay 10 Euros for one takeaway, sorry buddy, that's a nights accommodation in SE Asia. 

So we left there and whinged all the way to the Berlin Bier Shop where we were met with an equally cold reception.  We picked up a couple of beers (one of which smelled like lanolin/dags/sheep's p*ss - yum!) but may have left with a couple more if the owner had showed just a slight bit more enthusiasm for his country's craft beer scene. 

After that we headed through what seemed to be the Centrelink section of this city (too un-PC?) to the most random restaurant come brewery tap,  Zunftwirtschaft, to try beer by Brewcraft.  We felt like we were sitting in one of our Nanas' living rooms drinking beer.   It was quite surreal really - roses on tables with faded yellow tablecloths, a chef out the back in his full chef's whites, quite innovative beer on tap in a pretty random section of Berlin with nothing else similar near it at all in what seemed like an old house.  The Brewbaker IPA was very interesting though and had almost a Saison like character to it -  v enjoyable. 

On the way home we dropped into Hops & Barley for a few to finish the day.  We had the Wiezen, Dunkel, Amber and their Cider whilst all around us seats near the television became very hot property as the bar filled up and everyone settled in for "a very famous German show" which was to begin at 8.15.  It turned out to be a German cop drama that people can't seem to get enough of.  We had to whisper to pay as we quickly shuffled out to give up our seat for someone else who clearly wanted it much more than us. 

In terms of the beers, they do what it says on the label but it would be nice to see them push the boundaries a bit more. 

So our craft beer experience around Berlin gave us a bit of a mix bag. 

Honourable Mention

Quickly running around the corner to pick up four more Erdinger Weisse for less than 5 Euros is absolutely brilliant and so convenient.  Oh, I'm out of beer, be back in a few minutes as I just head to the corner store to pick up a few more, get 8 cents back for each previously emptied bottle and then open one at the counter to drink on the way back as two minutes is too long to wait. Brilliant! 

Dishonourable Mention

The Weihenstephan Bar in central Berlin is a tourist trap abomination. 

The Beers

Erdinger Wiessbier, Dunkel

Weihenstephan Hefeweissbier , Vitus

Hops & Barley Amber, Wiezen, Dunkel, (Cider) 

Gessner Dunkler Bock

BrauKunstKeller Pale Ale

Hopfenstopfer Incredible Pale Ale

Rathaus Pils

Kindl Unsweetened, Raspberry, Woodruff

Andechs Wiessbier

Braumanufactur Potsdamer Weisse, Stanger

Maisel & Friends Chocolate Bock, Jeff's Bavarian Ale

Brewbaker IPA

Lausitzer Kirsch Porter