And the winner is….Noma, again!

San Pelegrino has announced the best restaurants in the world 2012. For the third consecutive year Danish Noma with Rene Redzepi is the winner. Last year we tried to get a reservation but failed. Not very surprising – we were not alone. They received over 300.000 requests.

Noma has  made the jury interested in what’s cooking up in the north. This year we have three Swedish restaurants on the top 50 which must be a record. Frantzen/Lindeberg ended up on 20th place. Far up in the north at Fäviken, Magnus Nilsson is experimenting with lichen and moss which gave him the 34th place on the list. My favorite restaurant and chef, Mathias Dahlgren, captured a well deserved 41st spot.

I hope to see the Swedish restaurants even higher up on the list in 2013. Here is the complete list.

We watch food

Star chefs have, for at least the last two years, had Pop-up restaurants in Berlin during Fashion Week. Last year we couldn’t get tickets but this year we went to Prêt à Diner.

The project runs along and this spring and summer they’re visiting London and Monaco before returning to Berlin.

When we visited the pop-up we could choose from three different menues and chefs; Tim Raue, Ollysan, and Stephan Hentschel. We picked Raue and Ollysan.

The food was good, but the seating was for us food nerds amazing. We sat just above the kitchen and had an excellent view. It is truly amazing to watch pros at work.

GoodFellas – honest food

There is always a discussion going on whether France or Italy has the best cuisine. I am not sure either of them is the answer. What I do know is that the honest french bistro deserves every appreciation. A restaurant that has oysters, snails, foie gras, steak frites, mussels, steak tartar on the menu is a restaurant to return to. A good french bistro uses the best ingredients to serve non-complicated wonderful dishes.

Last week we visited Fellas in Stargarder Strasse (Prenzlauer Berg). A restaurant that among others serves some french bistro dishes. We both had the classic steak frites with bearnaise sauce. We got a wonderful pieces of entrecote, perfectly grilled, a tasty bearnaise with a nice touch of estragon. The fries were thin sticks which is not my choise of fries. In all a very good experience.

Inspired by the visit at Fellas, today we grilled a nice piece of steak and served it with chanterelle and a potatoes au gratin. Of course we had a tomato salad aside. A nice burgundy made the dinner complete.

Music: Listened to Charles Aznavour

Berlins best Burgers

If your favorite burgers are served at McD, you don’t need to read further. This article is about really good high quality burgers.

We love to make home-made burgers but as with all food, now and then, it is nice to get served. We’ve tried most of the places that are well-known for their burgers and here are our top 3 in Berlin.

1. The Bird. Without doubt the best burgers in town. All burgers are made of home minced beef! They come with different classical toppings and our favorites are Jack with blue cheese or the BBQ-Burger. Not only the beef has the highest quality. They have a burger with guacamole on the menu, but it’s only served when the chef gets ripe avocados. The place is always crowded and you’ll need a reservation. The interior is rough, wooden tables, benches and brick walls. It’s loud so this is not the place for a candle-light dinner. The only thing to complain about are the fries. They are not crunchy but rather soggy. Although this is an imperfection you can live with.
2. White Trash Fast Food. A place known for its parties and the crazy interior. You won´t miss, this was once a chinese restaurant. The parties are not the only reason for a visit. The american menu is really good, especially the burgers. The burgers are of course home-made and so are the buns. They come with different toppings and you should not be afraid to try the one with sauerkraut. It is really tasty. They have a home-made veggie burger that kicks ass according to my green friends. The place is huge but on weekends you better make reservations.
3. Tartane. When we went here we didn’t expect to see burgers on the menu. I am always sceptical towards restaurants that do not have a clear concept or restaurants that serves too many dishes. The quality at such places are often poor. Tartane is a restaurant with many dishes and no clear concept. They must have had problems deciding what kind of concept they should have because they covered themself fully by serving all kind of food. We didn’t have high expectations but the lamb burger with merguez sounded promising. And it truly was a great burger. Juicy, perfectly grilled with a spicy sausage. The home-made fries were ok. We only went here once (Oct 2010) but at this time we had a delicious meal. Note that some of the interior was taken from the Palast der Republik in the old Eastern Berlin.

Good but not good enough are Marienburger, Burgeramt, Kreuzburger.

Inspired by the restaurants above we made a hell-of-a Scandinavian Burger – Elk, red onions sweet-sour style, Västerbottencheese, horse-radish sauce.

Ingredients

• 800 minced elk (or minced beef)
• 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1/2 onion grated
• Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper
• 3 dl home-made mayonnaise
• 1 dl grated horse-radish
• 2 tbsp chives finely chopped
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 a tbsp soy sauce
• 4 red onions
• 50 g muscovado sugar
• 1 dl balsamic vinegar
• 4 slices Västerbotten cheese (swedish ripe cheese)
• pickled gherkins

Start with the sauce. Mix the mayonnaise, mustard (1 tbsp), horse-radish, chives and soy sauce. The flavor will get more complex the longer you wait.

Fry the onions in butter and sugar until they are caramellized. Add the balsamic vinegar and let it simmer for 15 min. Taste it and if it is too sour add sugar. Flavor with salt.

Mix beef, Dijon (2 tbsp), grated onion, oil, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Form for burgers and let them rest for 10 min before you grill them. Grilling time depends on the size of the burgers but they will at least need 3 min on each side.

I am not a big fan of buns so we served the burger on a sour-dough bread with pickled gherkins, Västerbotten cheese, caramellized onions and the sauce.

Music: Listening to Bob Hund

Noto

Yesterday we wanted to celebrate and decided to eat out. We went to Torstrasse in Berlin where we live and tried Noto – we’re guessing north of Torstrasse.

Noto

The location is great. There is only one rectangular white room but anyhow it gets cosy. I think it is due to the open kitchen, the bar and the soft lightening. In front of the kitchen there is almost a chambre separée.

What about the food? When we were their they changed the menu every day. We shared two main courses; “Risotto with chanterelle and truffle” and “Roast beef with chanterelle and polenta”

Both dishes tasted really good and were nicely presented. The risotto was cooked to perfection – al dente. It was plentiful with chanterelle on both dishes and plentiful with truffle on the first one. I am not a big fan of polenta but it was really good – creamy, flavoured with parmesan and with the roast beef and all chanterelle it was a really good accompaniment.

We shared the only dessert on the menu, plum mousse with fresh plums and nuts. It was ok but not more.

All in all a very nice experience!

Picture borrowed from Prinz.de

From Russia with love

Yesterday we had a friend visiting from Sweden. He wanted to try a russian restaurant that was recommended to him.It is really close to were we live so with a short stop in the biergarten we walked there.

I had the potato cakes with smoked salmon, horseradish and quark with herbs. The others ate sort of russian ravioli with three different stuffings; feta cheese, spinach/potato and chicken. For dessert we had the blini with almond curd and warm cherries.

We didn’t have the vodka, perhaps a mistake…But we did try the russian beer, Moskwa.

The restaurant, Pasternak,  is situated in a very nice area in Berlin called Prenzlauer Berg. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner with reasonable prices. The staff speaks a little english and they have their menus in several different languages.

The neighbour is also russian, a bar named Gagarin.