Top Picks: Hungry in Berlin's Guide to Appeasement

Thursday, December 6, 2007

You want pancetta, but you can only find speck. You can't afford the Michelin-starred eateries, but you'd love some decent noodles. You want to cook ghevar, but you don't think Spar stocks ghee. Who do you turn to? The Hungry in Berlin site is run by a quartet of bloggers who act as agony aunts to local foodies and aim to root out the city's "well hidden culinary secrets." -- the pick of the specialist shops, the warehouses full of bok choi, and the restaurants the Rough Guide never found. After the jump, your guides and their top tips for eating and cooking creatively in the hauptstadt.

Your hungry guides: John Borland is a tech and science journalist falling into the foodie rabbit hole, and Aimee Male was a tech journalist for ten years before she ran away to culinary school and now drinks lots of wine and writes about it. Ed Ward (who once wrote for this site) has been writing about food (often under the nom de table of Petaluma Pete) for 30 years, cooking it for longer than that, and eating it even longer than that, and Josh Ward (no relation), is a "sometime journalist who really fell in love with food and cooking because, whenever he was unemployed, he had to "do his bit for the household" by cooking.

Weinschenke Weinstein

Lychener Straße 33
10437 Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany

Best Restaurant. Josh had "given up on German food and on finding a restaurant with the winning trio of good food, good service, and good ambiance," until someone … recommended Weinschenke Weinstein when he needed a table for six at the last minute on a Friday night. He's now a convert, "it's an amazing gem, which has restored my faith (und wie!) in the possibility of good eats in Berlin. Wow, wow, wow. (And I promised myself I wouldn't spill the beans! Darn!)." [link]

N 52° 32.35386 E 13° 25.908

Vinh-Loi Asien Supermarkt

Müllerstraße 40
13353 Wedding, Berlin, Germany

[link]

N 52° 33.532 E 13° 21.10076

Tian-Fu Food

Berliner Straße 15
10715 Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany

Best Noodles. John will trek all the way across town for hand pulled Chinese noodles at Tian-Fu. "It's a little Chinese restaurant and dim-sum place connected to a … small Asian market. The noodles, in particular the cold dishes, are better than the dim sum." [link]

N 52° 29.13390 E 13° 19.44846

Sona Food Traders

Bülowstraße 57
10783 Schöneberg, Berlin, Germany

[link]

N 52° 29.42133 E 13° 22.299

Mitte Meer

Invalidenstraße 51
10557 Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

Best Spanish Deli. "Another wholesale market, this one Spanish. Huge wine selection, big room with salamis and cheeses," says Ed. Berliners who are feeling landlocked … and craving decent sea food should head to one of two Mitte Meer branches for "the real secret -- the freshest fish (small selection, high prices, but top quality) in town." [link]

N 52° 31.39219 E 13° 22.22198

Makoto

Alte Schönhauser Straße 13
10119 Mitte, Berlin, Germany

Best Homey Japanese Food. For straight-up home cooking from Japan, Aimee suggests Makato in Mitte, "A ramen shop with good house-made noodles. Nothing fancy like sushi … available, but a good bite to the soup noodles and wok dishes." [link]

N 52° 31.36623 E 13° 24.28425