überlin

Summer’s well and truly over, but that doesn’t mean that Berlin’s burgeoning street food scene has to suffer. Sure, open air events like Markthalle Neun’s Stadt Land Food are going into hibernation, but Bite Club has moved indoors, and more and more pop-up food events are, er, popping up, seeking shelter in bars, clubs and other venues all over the city.

One recent discovery is Neue Heimat‘s bar and food night, which can be found in a converted railway shed in the RAW Complex in Friedrichshain (also the location of the fantastic Urban Spree). As well as the ever-present Mogg & Melzer, eatable treats were provided by the Happy Belly oyster bar, Schneeweiß‘s pop-up restaurant and more! We tucked into a succulent surf n’ turf burger from Fisch Art and a chorizo and bean-filled delight from Maria Maria Arepas, while lubrication came in the form of Red Snappers (gin-laced Bloody Maries), Old Fashioneds and Negronis.

If you’re a fan of jazz, you’ll be happy to note that all this deliciousness coincides with the Jazzy Fridays weekly live sessions – and those who like their music with more bleeps and bloops will probably feel the main room DJ (thanks for the Caribou!). With entertainment going on until 4am or later, and more awesome food and drink than you could safely consume, Neue Heimat’s set to live up to its name in the cold months to come. Make this your new home this winter.

The owners of Filterhouse have their priorities in order. By day, they serve an impressive selection of filter coffees, and by night, a full menu of gin and tonics. Replacing the reliable Café Matilda, Filterhouse is ramping up the hipsterfication of our beloved Graefekiez with cold brew and cold drip (where did summer go?) and paleo options which taste as good as real Homo sapien food. We can recommend the pancakes with blueberries, coconut, syrup and mint, the (non-paleo) roast chicken with lime and spinach pesto in coffee-encrusted bread, and the coffee… Oh, the coffee! I tried a Gichathaini from Kenya, which was like a rhubarb-y kick up my arse – and I can’t wait to try the rest of the extensive selection. If you like coffee and/or food, check out Filterhouse. If you don’t, get out now!

It’s frankly bonkers that we’ve not been to Bite Club before now. The regular street food festival combines some of our favourite things: yummy food, booze, DJs spinning disco and the company of friends and their dogs (B.Y.O.Bully), all enjoyed al fresco, on a beautiful Berlin summer evening. We headed to the Kreuzberg edition, situated among the shipping containers of Hoppetosse by Badeschiff, to sink our teeth into Bunsmobile‘s next level three-hour-braised bacon burger and Heisser Hobel‘s Käsespätzle – the most mac n’ cheesy we’ve ever had! For drinks, we sampled the best of the Singleton Whisky Bar, including the Boss Hog, a blend of Tailfire single malt, Grand Marnier, sea salted caramel, bitters and… more bacon! Topped off with an ice cream sandwich from Zwei Dicke Bären, we took one more glance at the stunning view down the Spree, before stumbling home to sleep the sleep of the contented. Make sure you don’t miss the next Bite Club!

You know how you’re always complaining about the lack of real spicy Asian food in Berlin? And how you won’t venture past Schöneberg on the U-Bahn because West Berlin? Well these two things are not unrelated – and the fact is that you can spend a lovely day out and eat some of the best food you’ve had since moving here, by filling your face at Thai Park.

You’re looking for the middle of the field at the centre of Preußenpark, situated on the U7, just behind the fleamarket at Fehrbelliner Platz (here’s a map). There you’ll find a cluster of colourful umbrellas, under which the local Thai community are frying up their freshest, finest, most affordable national dishes. Grab a Som Tam salad or something far less heathy, order yourself a caipirinha from the cocktails and shisha stall (multikulti, na?), and find yourself a patch of grass. Then sit back and watch the hustle and bustle of one of our new favourite spots in Berlin.

It’s been a while since we’ve been to good supper club, and this was very good supper club indeed. Kaizoku Feast Club is run by the people behind the Japanese Curry pop-up of the same name, a couple of expats who are determined to bring authentic Asian flavours to Berlin. For their first feast, they invited us to sample a selection of hard-to-find dishes based on Szechuan cuisine, all washed down with local microbrew.

The epic tasting menu was designed to showcase the full range of this particular Chinese cooking tradition, and did it with aplomb. We had pork, beef, even ginger poached chicken presented in triplicate, each time with a different delicious sauce (for the completists, those were classic red oil, fish fragrant and Szechuanese pepper and sesame dressings), and everything was gorgeous, from the roasted red peanuts that whet our appetites to the rice dumplings in sweet honey soup that closed the door on our stomachs.

Kaizoku Feast Club lives up to its name, so anyone who wants to dig into healthy portions of Asian awesomeness should like this Facebook page for sweet, sweet updates.

Just as the quickest route to our heart is through our stomach, the surest way to gain access to the überlin coworking space is by toting bags full of delicious food. A couple of weeks after Silo brought their coffee beans and expertise to us, Pieoneers followed carrying meaty treats aplenty. On the menu were one of their delicious savoury pies and two kinds of Scotch eggs, an English delicacy that is perfect for lining the stomach for a serious night of drinking down the pub.

One of these baked, breaded beauties amounted to nothing less than the perfect hangover cure – recreating a Bloody Mary, with a tomato and basil salsa that replaces the egg’s yolk, all bound together with Worcestershire Sauce and, yep, vodka! The other variety, and the accompanying pie, both lined with black pudding, left us totally satiated, bellies full and homesickness abated.

To sample a taste of (our) home, go to pieoneers.de and place an online order(!) for pies, Scotch eggs (also available in veggie-friendly Falafel flavour), homemade chutneys and other specialities. Long live Pieoneers!

We didn’t *just* set up a coworking space to give us an excuse to set up a standing order for speciality coffee, but a partnership with Silo Coffee is one of the very first things we sorted out! The guys from Silo went out of their way to deliver the first batch of beans themselves, and took the opportunity to give us an impromptu coffee-making demonstration while they were here. For the geeks out there, our grab bag of goodies included: a Suke Quto from Ethiopia via The Barn, a Huila Palestina also roasted here in Berlin, by Bonanza – oh, and one of the most sought-after coffees in the world, a Geisha. Morgan and Pavel showed us how to prepare the perfect AeroPress coffee and left us with a recipe for cold brew that I’m looking forward to trying out. Yay!

If you’re interested in tasting Silo’s black stuff, here’s how:

– visit Silo’s wonderful café in Friedrichshain
– sign up for the Silo Curated Coffee Subscription, and get delicious beans/grounds delivered to your doorstop
– rent a desk at our coworking space! We brew up the finest specialty coffees every day, and I’m currently working out how to get it to come straight out of the taps. ????