I mentioned, in my last post, that they’re pretty seafood crazy here in Hamburg. Specifically, they seem to really love fish sandwiches, because pretty much everywhere you go near the water, there are about a million different vendors serving them up.
Seafood is huge here in Hamburg — aside from the fact that the Elbe river runs right through the city, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea are both super close. Notwithstanding a tragic incident involving a dropped fish sandwich worth 12 Euros, this was my first time eating seafood here.
And oh man, it was so good.
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.
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.
Remember when I tried a vending machine kebab sandwich, found it disgusting, but then admitted that I’d eat more weird vending machine food if I found it?
Well I’m a man of my word.
Hey, you know the pancakes that you grew up loving? Yeah, they’re trash. The Austrians have perfected the pancake; we all need to get with the program and follow their lead.
One of the first things I ate when I got to Graz was a wiener schnitzel from a fairly well-regarded restaurant, and it was fine, but the meat was a little bit dry. I’ve had better back in Toronto. And it’s like, what the hell? I’m in Austria. This should be the best wiener schnitzel of my life.
So I figured, okay, I’ll try again when I get to Vienna.
I had some flat-out awful meals at McDonald’s in Spain and Italy — meals that were so bad, they made me look at my life and think “am I doing this right?” Well, here comes the land of Arnold Schwarzenegger to hold out a hand and let me know I’m doing just fine. Because McDonald’s in Austria knows how to do it.