Rogaki! Since 1928!

Rogaki we first heard about from one of my heros, Anthony Bourdain. His show No Reservations featured Berlin and this was one of the places that they went. A real old school German deli/lunch place. Since 1928 Rogaki has been serving up quick meals of Meat, fish and fixings. The place is shaped like big horseshoe where you walk down the middle and are assaulted by fresh fish on this side, smoked fish on the other, and meat meat meat galore, cooked, marinated, fresh. The bar of pickled fishes, and other accoutrement is easily 50 feet long. They locally source over 70 types of fish daily and and have every part of the pig or cow for sale.

I started off with a hunk of fried cod and a few types of potato salad. Both the salads were great German potato salads heavy on the vinegar and set off the fried fish well. One used a more creamy sauce and one less(I don't think most people get both) They do everything by weight at Rogaki so they weight your plate out charge you for the size of the fish you want and the weight of your sides. Mine came out to something like 5.50 euro but I saw another guy with a massive piece of fish and some mound of potato salad and I sneaked a peak at his recipt 12.65 euros! Now that's a lunch!

The next round was pickled fish! This is a herring fillet that has been pickled and wrapped around a pickled cucumber(sometimes called a pickel) that has been stuffed with pickled onions. This was a MASSIVE herring fillet. I really like pickled fish, and Jessie doesn't really, but for some reason she decided she needed to get two huge pickled fish rolls. The herring was quite nicely pickled still a bit delicate and actually Jessie said she wouldn't have been able to eat it except for the tasty pickle inside, it helped balance out the fishiness to a point where she could take it.

Now I'm not exactly sure what this was:

It seemed like they battered and fired a herring fillet, wrapped it around a pickel and some pickled onions and then pickled the whole thing again. Weird, yes, very pickle-y yes. Tasty... I guess so? but I wouldn't order it again.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we packed some smoked fish for dinner. Smoked Ahi tuna, butterfish, halibut and little tiny bite sized fish whose name I couldn't translate. The tuna was ok, but not worth the price, the halibut also wonderful and wonderfully expensive. The real treat for me was the very dirt cheap butterfish that lived up to it's name, almost creamy flesh when smoked, took on a lot of the flavors of the smoke and had a fabulous texture that seemed to thrive in the slightly drier condition that smoking brings out. It was by far the most tasty, texturally pleasing, and overall incredible experience. But it also cost about 1/5th as much as the rest of the fish! Sometimes you don't really get what you pay for.


I wish I wish I wish we lived closer to Rogaki so that I could have eaten my way further into the hidden delights.
In addition to traditional headcheese they had specialty seafood headcheeses. I didn't even get a proper sausage, or any of their meat products at all! They had yard and yards of special dips and sauces and mysterious creamy chunky things all written in German. Sigh, I think I need to go back to Berlin. Anyone want to hire an ex-Neuroscientist in Berlin to do non-researchy things?

-Nom!

Maroush Lebanese restaurant

OK, I'm not going to lie, we heard about Maroush the second or third day we were in Berlin. It was supposed to have the best felafel in the city. Now I'm not going to say we ate there EVERY day... but I would say that we ate there 15 times in the 30 days we were in Berlin would be conservative. It was a few miles from our house at Kottbusser Tor nicknamed Kotti by the locals.


The first time we went to Maroush I got the Felafel Teller which is basically a plate with a small salad 6 felafels, hummus, pickled vegetables all drowned in their fabulouus tahini. The use pure unadulterated 100% pure sesame paste sooo delicious. For 5 Euro this was a massive meal and well worth it.

The thing that really got us hooked on Maroush was the Chicken Shawarma. Here is the spit they used:
Now that's one big pile of chickeny goodness. on the top of the shawarma they have some whiteish stuff that I think is fat to drip all of its tasty goodness slowly through the cooking process. The chicken meat is highy marinated and to me looks like they just deboned a couple dozen chickens and stacked them up on a huge skewer. They take a pita bread dough and dump a huge dollup of garlic sauce inside it then layer french fries and a bunch of pickled vegetables inside, a mish mash of chicken and a huge dollop of their amazing tahini. Then they tightly roll it and shove it into a panini press. 2.50 euro. great lunch.

It may not look super duper appetizing because of the amazing garlic sauce running over everything but it is to DIE FOR. This makes up at least 13 of the 15 times we went. Worth flying to Berlin for.


We also tried their beef shawarma, Skewered beef, parsley, grilled tomatoes, pickled radish and tons of Tahini. They make a lot less of the beef every day then they do of the chicken. The skewer is about half as tall as the chicken and a lot thinner. I kind of agree, it's beefy but slightly drier then the chicken. The sandwich tastes more fresh because of the parsley but it's not as satisfying and amazing as the chicken. Worth a try but not worth flying to Berlin for. 2.50 Euro


Last but certainly not least is the Felafel Sandwich. This is a tasty meal in it of itself, 3 freshly fried balls of fluffy on the inside crispy on the outside goodness. Made fresh in a proper felafel scoopy thing to order. The dough always looks fresh and comes out in a medium size bowls throughout the day. To be honest their felafels are some of the best I have ever had. They aren't too squishy and they hold their shape when you bite into them and yet they are soft and delicate inside. The perfect blend of crispy and moist, healthy and fatty. The dough is mostly chickpeas, parsley, onion, mint, and any other tasty aromatic herbs you can think of high in protein and vitamins and minerals. You take that dough and you deep fry it! 2.50 Euro Maroush

Packed with cabbage, parsley and pickled turnips and cucumbers. Of course, tons of tahini.

-NOM!

Doner(where is the Umlat on my keyboard?)

Döner(thanks copy and paste!) Kebab which was actually first stuffed into a piece of bread in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin at a little place called Hasir.

A Döner is a Massive hunk of heavily seasoned mystery meat. I mean massive, MASSiVE This is an image I captured after the lunch rush. Can you imagine this bad boy at breakfast time?

I have loved Döner ever since I first got one in spain last summer. My girlfriend also has a fondness for Döner, well a little fondness. I was well on my way to having a Döner a day and she was suddenly not too fond of Döner anymore. But this delightful bit of mystery meat had found its way into my heart(not literally though it probably would have at a Döner a day).

At least this little guy with his face buried in a Döner Kebab agrees with me.

Almost everywhere claims that their Döner is Halal which means no pig parts but a genetic test run by a major newspaper showed some places had meat containing beef, lamb, chicken, and pig all at once. Not really Helal, but tasty none the less.

So there are two main choices when it comes to a Döner sandwich in Berlin, Durum Döner and Döner Kebab.

A Döner kebab is a quarter of a turkish flatbread with a big layer of meat along with cabbage, onions and red cabbage(we are in Germany after all). Then there are several sauces yogurt, chili and brown. I never really figured out what the brown sauce is... I think this is for the best.



A Durum Döner is a tortilla like flatbread that is filled with the same ingredients and rolled into a burrito like shape and wrapped in aluminum foil. For some reason this option always costs 50c more.



Kaplan is a major player in the Döner game, a game which now is estimated to be worth something 3.25 billion dollars in sales in just germany


They aren't my favorite producer of Döner, but the are well seasoned heavily salted and a great go to lunch. There are still a few independent producers of Döner usually their skewers aren't quite as beautiful and uniform as a kaplan Döner, and often cost a bit more. But they can be more unique and more tasty. I think of kaplan maybe as the McDonalds of Döner, it's not very good, but you know what you are going to get when you order one.

One of my favorite places for a good one off unique Döner is Mustafa's outside Mehringdam U station right next to Curry 36 stand where the best currywurst in Berlin is(see my currywurst post for more on this.) Check out their Website pretty awesome. The Döner here has a more real and unique taste. The meat is sliced off and mixed with roasted fall fruits(apples pears etc) that have been sitting under the turning spit. A Döner comes with yogurt sauce and chili sauce, the usual vegetables and with a very strong salty feta cheese which sets off the roasted fruits in the meat and makes for a very tasty Döner. The only problem I have with Mustafa's is the very lackluster bread. it tastes like plain white hamburger buns and is more of an afterthought than a compliment.


Very tasty and very very messy:
What? I'm just saving some for later... on my face.

-NOM!

Currywurst! Spysnack or a hot dog with ketchup?

Currywurst is a uniquely Berlin invention created in the Charlottenburg neighborhood by Herta Heuwer. It starts with a wurst or pork sausage that is fried in oil(deep fried or pan fried) sliced and doused in ketchup and raw curry powder. It's sold out of trucks, small imbiss(fast food) stand and in restaurants around Germany.

Rumor has it currywurst stands around Checkpoint Charlie(American diplomatic checkpoint in the Berlin wall) were used as a incognito meeting place for spies, informants, and generally people who weren't supposed to be in each other's company.
My first currywurst was disappointing. A little burger/wurst fast food stand in Hermanplatz, quickly scarfed to appease a grumbling tummy. It was literally a American hotdog fried, slathered in American style ketchup with a tiny bit of curry powder on top of the ketchup. With fries(pommes) and the smallest coke I have ever drank .2 l 2.50 Euro. The soggy fries were just the final kick while I was down.


I'll admit it, I wasn't very happy, and I had just about written off currywurst at one go! But I have a rule, I will try ANYTHING not once, but three times. We were walking around Checkpoint Charlie and I spied, with my little eye, this truck:


It's a German Weinermobile! If someone made a truck, and even a MUSEUM for currywurst, it must be worth another shot! Where better then the currywurst museum itself! With 4 or 5 people handing out fliers for the museum it couldn't be a huge tourist trap could it?

This was the second stab into the world of Currywurst. Here they added the raw curry powder directly onto the currywurst, and I was faced with a decision: Skin or no skin. Apparently this is a big debate in the currywurst world should this pork sausage be incased in a snappy, crisp skin, or should it be unbound to marinate in its own juices and fry the meat itself rather then the barrier of fettering pork intestine.

Here I tried the skin on variety. The skin itself becomes rather tougher then a sausage skin usually does on the grill or boiled. It gives a different texture to the outside which vaguely reminded me of a thin piece of tendon, luckily I love gristle tendon and all things with this texture(tendons and hearts and kidneys OH MY!)

Sorry, back to the Currywurst. With the curry powder applied directly to the meat and the ketchup over it I feel it lets the curry flavor concentrate more on the meat. Also they used a tomato sauce/curry blend without the zing of vinegar that ketchup has. The sausage was OK but not remarkable. We decided not to go into the currywurst museum mostly because Jess probably would have killed me if I made her sit through a couple hours of Currywurst history and toys.

So far, lets be honest, Currywurst is not very impressive, it's a decent sausage(sometimes) drowned in tomato based sauces with a tiny hint of curry in them. Cheap, maybe a utility food, but really nothing to write a blog about. I was quite disappointed since you can't seem to spit in Berlin without it landing in a pile of ketchup soaked sausage.

I was being tested. I knew I had to go all out for the final attempt, find the greatest currywurst in Berlin, and see what all the fuss is about. Asking around and trying to find where the locals go for great currywurst I came up with Curry 36 right by the Mehringdam U station. By this point my lovely girlfriend has given up on currywurst and won't even try mine, luckily there is another tasty treat up the street Mustafa's(for more about that see my Doner post[coming soon]). This place is packed during the day with a half hour long line. Luckily we snuck in during a Germany World Cup game and I grab some food without a wait.

Glory of glories, non-encased sausage with a most heavenly of homemade sauces. Heavy on the tomatoes with just a tiny hint of vinegar and a light sweetness. Heavy on the curry blend and extra raw curry directly on the meat. The sausage itself was light and the flavors penetrated the meat well without the casing. Even the crispy fries were coated with a touch of curry! This place, I had to go back to, and I did, right as were were leaving town, I waited 30 minutes with my huge 85 liter backpackers pack on just to get a last taste of currywurst before leaving Berlin.
-Nom!