Eat Like Ushi

I don't normally eat up that way since it's sort of middle area between Soho and the places more north-west. But The King & I was showing nearby and I was lucky enough to snag some last minute tickets. With time of the essence, something quick and tasty and nearby was essential.

It's a dim sum restaurant that makes those dishes available in the evening to satisfy the odd-timed craving.

- Seaweed salad (seaweed with rocket, kikurage mushroom, crunchy radish and a little red chilli, garnished with sesame seeds) £2.75;
- Firecracker chicken rolls (chicken marinated in lantern chilli peppers, asparagus and coriander in a spring roll pastry with smoky orange sauce) £5.35 - not that impressive and didn't have much heat. Expensive too compared to other dishes;
- Golden dumplings (crisp stir fry vegetables in a turmeric pastry) £3.55 - it looks fluorescent although the taste and filling was quite simple vegetables;
- Black prawn dumpling (king prawn & garlic butter in squid ink pastry) £4.55 - also impressive looking with a bit of discernible prawn in there;
- Beijing quinoa gyoza (griddled quinoa, mushroom and cabbage, wrapped in a wheat pastry with garlic and vinegar dressing) £3.25 - a little more unusual and had a more gritty texture from the quinoa;
- Prawn & scallop sticky rice (prawns, scallop, carrot, bamboo shoots and glutinous rice, steamed in lotus leaf) £5.95 - not too bad;
- Smoked chilli chicken wings (cherrywood smoked chicken wings with a tangy tomato chilli sauce) £6.45 - small little wings with a little bit of heat but not much smoke.

Overall the food was ok and a little different from standard yum cha. The prices were overall reasonable also particularly for that part of town. I'd go back.

After dreaming all year about kebabs, the trip to Berlin would not be complete without trying to long reputed #1. If Berlin was where the kebab was invented, how could I exclude a visit from probably my last ever trip to Germany?

I waited until the last meal of the week before a bus to the airport.

There are several branches in town, and for convenience I went to the only one not in the east of the city - Hauptstraße 156 near U Kleistpark. There I saw the beef döner rotating with the individual layers of meat discernible, and not the uniform mass I see elsewhere.

Döner im brot €3.5 - the photo (lighting) doesn't do it justice. Eat piece of beef was soft and tender and the milk that apparently marinates it. The layer of lamb fat adds extra lusciousness and flavour. The fresh vegetables provide balance. It is truly excellent and the best cheap döner kebab I've eaten. 

The meat flavour is milder than Stalactites lamb or the potent Bairaktaris pork (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/bairaktaris-athens-09-2010) and less refined than Jimmy Grants (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/jimmy-grants-melbourne-09-2015) or Basta! (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/basta-street-food-bar-istanbul-10-2017). But this is elevated into that elite company - each have their own strong points.

Pilau rice with lamb was a strongly flavoured tomato rice with also tender and strongly flavoured meat. Finally the künefe with cream was sweet and cheesy.

Maybe I will go back to Berlin one day...

If you look up best Vietnamese restaurants in Berlin, there's a few recurring names and Cowei is not one of them. There are located along a park next to the river Spree and so they'd probably get business regardless of the quality. To be fair they don't advertise as a Vietnamese restaurant and the menu has sushi, bits of Korean, and bits of Thai.

The inside has a picture of Ho Chi Minh. It represents the restauranteurs' heritage from Northern Vietnam.

Hanoi has arguably the better pho in Vietnam and its quality was represented well in this restaurant. A delicate and crystal clear broth with wonderful flavour balance and decent beef brisket. Interestingly they don't use raw/rare beef sirloin dropped in and I would have liked extra Thai basil, but I can hardly complain. It was excellent.

Unfortunately the other dishes didn't live it up. The crispy fried duck red curry did indeed have thin cuts of crispy fried duck, but the red curry was not red and had none of the flavour and heat that a good Thai red should (considering Viet curry is simple and not spicy at all probably influenced this...). I didn't try the chicken salad dish but the Vietnamese mother I was with strangely selected the mango sauce, which she then complained wasn't a Vietnamese thing - not sure what to make of that. The other Vietnamese salad dish (unpictured) did not have a good balance of the dressing sauce, with it being too dilute and vinegared, possibly contributed by the water from lettuce draining into it.

I'd go back for the pho but stay clear of everything else.

It's been a very long time since my last visit (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/duck-waffle-london-11-2012). Despite meaning to, I hadn't the opportunity or occasion to visit for the past 18 months. 1 visit to Sushisamba (which is plenty given the prices...) meant I was only a few metres away but this time and special occasion came to fruition. Since that time, the prices have gone up by 20-50%.

I had requested a window table for the view over a month beforehand. The restaurant told me on the phone that had received this. It was strange that the designated table was in the middle of the room, moreso because after enquiring we were given a table a few moments after. Who knows.

Once again there was the view of the gherkin. A little pivot meant a view of Tower Bridge. Despite the 31C day, the sunlight wasn't directly on us and so it could not have been more pleasant.

The cocktail theme of the month was vegetables. A pina-kale-ada was a twist on the classic with a vibrant green colour and a light kale flavour mixing with the coconut rum and pineapple. I was unexpectedly impressed.

- BBQ-spiced crispy pig ears £6 - I like these more now than I did back then. The mixed crisp and chewy texture and the strong BBQ/paprika are great as snacks;
- Smoked eel (creme fraiche, horseradish, samphire) £10 - small morsels that seemed a bit less interesting than the individual ingredients suggesting smoke, fish, salty and heat should;
- Spiced duck doughnut (charred pineapple jam, paprika sugar) £12 - ok so I thought this was a bit too strange. Others on the table liked it. Most of all I thought the doughnut dough was quite dry and firm lacking the soft spongey doughy-ness. The flavours mixed savoury and sweet but not in a way I liked;
- 'Nduja seared octopus (whipped yellow lentils, fennel, green sauce) £12 - an outstanding dish of sublime soft octopus in a potent and slightly spicy sauce;
- Duck & waffle (crispy leg confit, fried duck egg, mustard maple syrup) £18 - the namesake dish still remains excellent (although less flavoursome than the octopus). The crisp duck skin housing soft meat and coated with duck yolk and syrup on a piece of waffle. Anytime dishes don't get better.

The view is great, the service was decent and the food remains generally very good. It will stay high up in the order of occasional places for me.

Strangely enough there are no gelaterias near Spitalfields. You'd think there would be something given the clientele. Spitalfields market used to have a dessert stall next to the dumplings but it's fair to say their business unfortunately paled in comparison.

The nearest and closest is the proclaimed homemade icecream from Valerie with the outside corner exposing it to the courtyard with Tour de France playing on a big screen. On a 31C humid day, this was a much needed break.

The flavours are somewhat limited and not overly exciting. Hazelnut had a very mild flavour. Black Forest tasted like mild chocolate with some dried berry within it. There were some ice crystals in it too. Acceptable within the conditions albeit far from the best.

With all these 28C days, gelato is always advised. I didn't get the chance to venture down to Jones but a more convenient option walking around Mitte was this one near the park. I couldn't read most of the flavours. In the end they didn't actually have a lot of them so there's no point preparing in advance.

The pricing is odd - €1.6 per scoop. Regardless of how many scoops or how many cones. So each person to their own single scoop cone then...

The rum & raisin was excellent with a clear rum flavour and dotted with raisins. The blueberry was also nice and somewhat sweet with no tartness. The textures were smooth and no crystals.

A solid option.

There are many a kebaberie in Berlin. Imren is reportedly the best around serving excellent layers of beef marinated in milk and cooked with lamb fat. Unfortunately it isn't the most convenient to get to and so the best chicken is supposedly at Mustafa's. However this has queues (sometimes excessive apparently) and so K'Ups is meant to be as good or perhaps better. And a more convenient location for staying in Mitte too.

They only serve a chicken kebab (for meat) or alternatively halloumi. They come interestingly with not only fresh salad and herbs, but also grilled potatoes and vegetables which have been cooked and then sat under the meat. There's a very mild chilli sauce and all is topped with fine feta. The overall result is a very flavoursome roasted chicken with both savoury cooked vegetables and fresh light salad. It's a great combination. Similarly the halloumi version was as good with fried salty cheese.

It would have to be the best chicken kebab I've had overall. I wonder how a beef one would fare...

There's no shortage of falafel places in Berlin representing all the great falafel countries of the world. For €4 Dada will give you their own version in bread. They use fresh raw vegetables (nothing unusual in that mix), a pretty mild chilli sauce, and a falafel that is heavily spiced on the mildly crisp (could've easily been more) crust and contains quite a lot of green herbs in the mix.

It's a good one.

Their döner also has discernible meat layers so that could be an alternative for next time.

Who doesn't like dumplings? A lunchtime special of 14 dumplings for €7.9 seemed like a good reason to try the Mushroom Magic (broccoli/shiitake/tofu and mushroom/potato) however even though they were fried reasonably, the skins were thick and pasty, the fillings were heavy on potato and quite indistinct and the sauce (which I spilt everywhere) couldn't save it.

It's not a reference to the Simon & Garfunkle MILF song. It's a modern Asian restaurant in Berlin with an Australian manager (named Hamish - and a great dry wit to match Hamish Blake) that was recommended to me by a very food-loving person.

It seems that the restaurant has changed somewhat since its inception and the Berlin Food Stories blog post, the difference being higher prices and different menu items (for example the Szechuan G&T I read about was not an option, with only London's dry gin served).

- Oyster & fried green tomatoes (fermented limequat & green chilli) €10 - slightly salty oyster, tangy and fried crisp tomato and a tart (almost tamarind) sauce. A good combination;
- Fried label rouge chicken & roe (creme fraiche, tobasco honey) €13.5 - the chicken was excellent, crisp, crunchy, tender and the other ingredients added some depth, complexity and a variety of flavours;
- Wood-grilled octopus & dry aged beef fat skewer €13.5 - tender charcoal-kissed octopus. I'm not sure the beef fat added much (maybe to the cooking but not so much the flavour?. I ate it anyway;
- Grilled Tiergarten crayfish, brown butter (shio koji, burnt lemon) €22.5 - small little crayfish served in a divine creamy butter sauce. The mix of oil, butter, salt and lemon was incredible;
- Lamb spare ribs, pine, green curry & hay (fermented green strawberry & plums) €31 - very expensive dish of reasonably tender lamb ribs that didn't have much flavour to them. The sauce was thick and much too salty;
- Plum, lavendar takoyaki pancakes (taga tairo kushu 10 year barrel-aged sake, clotted cream, yubeshi) €19 for 2 - obviously takoyaki from the shape and maker but not actually the tako. It was like a modern Asian version of afternoon tea replacing the scones. The plums were sweetly soaked, the sake was surprisingly sweet and easy to take, but overall the dish didn't leave me that wowed (especially for the price).

It's quite an expensive restaurant (especially for Berlin standards) but not outrageous. However I can't help having felt underwhelmed somewhat. The flavours and creations just can't match those from Melbourne's Longrain or Chin Chin. Maybe that's just what my body is used to.