Photo time? Photo time.
While searching for the best places to eat in Berlin, a burger joint called Burgermeister came up a lot. Typically, this would be the type of recommendation that I’d dismiss without much thought; I’m sure there’s great Mexican/Vietnamese/whatever cuisine in every city I visit, but unless I’m in Mexico/Vietnam/Whateverland, I just have no interest in that food.
But I have to admit: the only burger I’ve eaten since starting this trip has been a fairly abysmal one from McDonald’s. My burger blog — which I kept going right up until I left — had me eating burgers regularly for years. I was jonesing.
There’s a dish they serve in Berlin called käsespätzle, and basically it’s spätzle — a German version of pasta that’s normally served as a side dish — cooked with soft fried onions and a ton of gooey, stringy, super-melty cheese. I think they fry the whole thing around, because there were brown crispy bits of cheese throughout.
There are certain dishes that are popular in one country but virtually unheard of in most others, yet they’re so approachable and tasty that it just makes you scratch your head. Like, why does the whole world eat stuff like pizza or tacos, but not this?
Currywurst is one of those dishes. It’s absolutely everywhere here in Berlin. I doubt you can walk more than a block or two without stumbling across a place that serves it.
So the McRib is just on the regular menu at McDonald’s in Germany, and it has been for a while. Here we are in North America waiting for it to come back once every few years like chumps, and the Germans can just mosey into a McDonald’s and order it whenever they want. Like kings.
Obviously that’s what I got.
Prepare yourself: this is going to be one of those posts where I rave about something that I ate, and where you think “jeez, this guy needs to get a grip.”
Because I just ate a kebab sandwich from Rüyam Gemüse Kebab, and holy frigging moly you guys. Holy frigging moly.
The oldest restaurant in Berlin is called Zur Letzten Instanz, and it’s been around since 1621 (so, not quite as old as the bakery I visited in Austria, but still pretty darn old).
Pretty much everyone seems to be in agreement that when you come here, you have to order the grilled pork knuckle (also known as a roasted ham hock — basically a huge chunk of pork, bone and all, from just above the pig’s foot). I require very little encouragement to order a huge chunk of pork, so obviously that’s what I got.