I'm A White Trash Superstar

So many cool places to eat in Berlin, so little time. We've followed a few recommendations from people about places to eat and we've just followed our noses for some places. There's also a few that we've gone into purely for the humour value and ended up with a tasty meal or a good night's entertainment.

Berlin has soup! Intersoup is one of those places that doesn't look so great from the outside, but then you get inside; and it still doesn't look that great. I mean, can you really trust a restaurant that has it's website on myspace? Turns out you can, and we overcame our dubiousness while we squabbled about who got to embarrass themselves by ordering bier at the bar. We needn't have worried as the barmaid (like almost everyone in Berlin) spoke enough English for us to grab some giant beers and order our soups. They have an interesting assemble your own soup method of ordering, where you can pick the kind of broth you would like (Thai or Japanese) and then pick your meat (or lack thereof with some tofu). Sancha elected to have their special which was apple and celery soup with chicken. After our tasty soup we checked out "undersoup"; their downstairs area that was incredibly tiny and intimate. The night we were there there was a lovely German lady on the keyboard and ukulele, accompanied by a guy of the cello. We had to leave after a few songs as Sancha was feeling uncomfortable not understanding what she was singing about. For all we knew she was singing about the ugly, rude foreigners in the corner and we were applauding her.

Berlin has kebabs! But not always as we know them. We got a kebab for lunch one afternoon that was served in flatbread that had been cut almost in half, pried open, and stuffed full of kebab meat and salad. It turns out that when we had asked for a "döner kebab" we had gotten the most popular type of kebab in Germany instead of what we had thought we were getting, a wrapped kebab, which is a "dürüm döner". This actually turned out to be pretty great, there is much less kebab meat in these than your traditional Australian late night sandwich, and a lot more fresh salad. Sancha was delighted with the hidden cache of shredded beetroot at the bottom of hers, but I tried to inconspicuously hide mine under the wrapper. I tried to make it know to our generous kebab vendor that I would like hommous with my delightful sandwich, while my lovely lunch companion desired garlic sauce with hers. Turns out we were both provided with garlic sauce which was pretty rough on the breath but he did cook us some tasty "pommes frites" to round off our exceptionally healthy meal. All in all a great success.

Berlin has fast food! Probably the highlight of our dining experience was White Trash Fast Food. This was another recommendation as a great place to see a gig. We ended up having such a long day walking and stuffing ourselves so full of their tasty food that we had to go home and sleep it off before the show even started. In our defence the show didn't start until 20:30 on a Sunday night. Germany loves to party late, even on a school night. White Trash looks as thought their interior decorator had taken all his schizophrenic meds, crushed them up with some speed, done several lines of the resulting concoction in the bathroom of an old chinese restaurant, and then gone to town. Yes, the dogs eyes in the picture on the wall are glowing, and the rest of the decor takes its good taste from there, runs with it, and drowns it and a sack of puppies in the river. Throw in a hefty dose of bar staff that look like they ate a rockabilly performer for breakfast and the heavily tattooed waitresses and it was a fantastic night. My Berlin Fried Chicken came with a mound of mashed potato and a well of thick, delicious gravy inside and Sancha feasted on the delicious 'not so small' sized dish of California Nachos. We didn't have any room left to try the "Fuck You Fries" unfortunately.

Berlin has hotdogs! We stopped off at this hotdog place while we were wandering around. They had some tasty hotdog that, while small, were pretty cheap so ideal for a quick snack. I grabbed a hotdog with fried onion and gherkin on the top, and Sancha got one with spicy cheese on it. I had to resist the urge to go back and try several of their other hot dogs.

Berlin has dougnuts! Sort of! We found a replacement for the Berry Donut Van! These are tasty little versions of the regular donut, cooked fresh and dusted with icing sugar. We devoured these so quickly we got the icing sugar all over us and it must have looked like it was snowing. I think they were Berliner pastries but without any filling.

Berlin has schnitzel! And boy is it ever so good. We've had a couple of these since we've been here at various bars and restaurants and they've all been tasty. Sancha is having Pork Involtini in this picture just to be difficult, though since we basically took a look at the menu and picked the dish that we could almost recognise all of the ingredients.