Asian Tiger (Greifswalder Str 208)

If you find yourself wandering down Greifswalder Strasse on a Sunday, hungry and irritable due to the supermarket closing before your untimely arrival, don’t go to Asian Tiger. I ordered vegetable spring rolls and a tofu Phad Thai ('ve eaten too much chicken lately, I'm not turning into Moby).

When the spring rolls arrived, a realisation dawned that countless bad Asian restaurant experiences could have previously been avoided, if I'd used the spring roll starter as a litmus test to whether I should even bother ordering a main. Bad Asian restaurants create spring rolls like these I thought, as oil from the deep fat fryer slithered down my chin. I was relieved the sun had just disappeared, sitting at my kerb side table, the spring roll left me feeling vulnerable of being fried from the inside out - my innards spitting in hot grease, until they melted through my skin and dropped into daylight.

Unforyunately I had already ordered the main. The 'Pad Thai' arrived with me being typically British and nodding my approval at the departing half eaten spring rolls as the waitress removed my plate. The Pad Thai was limp, bland and did nothing to dispel my spring roll theory. The tofu, deep fried, overcooked, and almost as foul to the tastebuds as Moby is to the ears. Thoroughly depressing.

I've heard the Miso soup is good.

Cafe Maibach (Wörther Straße 28)

My first eating experience at Maibach was, well...cheesy. I ordered the 'Fromage antipasti' and during occasional breaks from swatting gingerly at wasps, I admired my surroundings. From the restaurants south-facing corner, I could see every cobble that lined the quintessential Prenzlauer Berg street, Rykestrasse. The window boxes look like statement-making colourful handkerchiefs in the pocket square of a suit, as they overflow from the wonderful townhouses that define this part of Berlin. The barrel chested, stoic, water tower announced the streets end; while the extra-terrestrial TV tower hovered in the blue sky of Berlin in the distance.

My 'Fromage Antipasti' arrived. It looked like someone had prepared a stockpile of cheese, but forgot to buy the mousetraps. Nothing, but cheese. Five mountains of inch sized cubes: A very mild cheddar - although, given that it was so mild it was nearly tasteless, it may well have been a deutsche bastard child of cheddar. Hellumi - unless its been grilled, I just don't see the attraction. A strong blue cheese - creamy and sharp, but I had eaten too much cheese before we encountered each other. Another mild yellow cheese and, finally, I think there was feta.

I was even more surprised when I realised I'd eaten everything, than by it's arrival. One-by-one I had soldiered through the cheese cubes, nearly to the point of having to check with the back of my hand that my mouth hadn't evolved into four corners.

Perfect location, strong cappuccino, smiley staff, wifi. And cheese.

*23/8 Returned and had an excellent late brunch. Pan mottled Scrambled eggs with crispy bacon. Interesting to learn the Germans follow the Turks with a salad side - an odd assortment of lettuce, tinned sweetcorn and olives.

Anyabella (Kirchstrasse)

Baked buckwheat Peirogi, wink at me from a bath of bubbling, Deutsche cheese. Topped with a sprinkling of chives.

I 'vill be back.

Broom Broom Go Boom Boom

Burnt-out cars and people on crutches - two of the more curious mysteries I see with a surprising frequency in Berlin. The reason for the numbers of crutches remains unsolved. However, I am now aware why burnt-out cars are scattered in the posh boulevards of town. I can separate the two. So, therefore, the broken limbs cannot be a result of German drivers being thrown by the blast as they scramble out of exploding vehicles.

Over the past six months, following violent clashes that erupted at a neo-Nazi rally held in Lichtenberg, Left-wing activists have blazed a trail across the more 'well to do' parts of town. Since January, 170 cars have been torched, close to a hundred of these has been attributed by the police to being politically motivated.

This anonymous website maps the car burnings

Mercedes, BMWs and Porsches have been set alight using barbeque Firelighters. This appears the method of choice, due to the Flame bearer being more in danger of getting a stitch during his flee from the scene, than being hit by a shower of shrapnel.

A motive for the arson attacks is believed to be the gentrification of Berlin. There is a brazenly evident disdain, not to mention fear, of the affect this will have on a city which proudly holds it's diverse, effervescent neighbourhoods up to be admired.

It is believed the attacks are triggered by the very definition of gentrification - affluent middle classes displacing the residents of a traditionally working class neighbourhood. Having witnessed the Croc* wearing, wooden bike buying, baby shop breeding, eye stinging missiles to affordable living in London, Prenzlauer Berg is ripe with evidence it is following suit. With that, a simmering or should I say smouldering resentment will persist.

* Even the recession has a silver lining

Some early impressions of Berlin...

Berlin feels like a large shared apartment with both flatmates away; London can feel like a stag party in January, in a claustrophobic one-bed flat in Vauxhall.

It feels like a city waiting to be used, not a city that is manipulating you. It feels open and tangible, the fundamentals are in the correct places. Unlike London, which can sometimes feel like you've got the vision of a mole and turned off the light without leaving your spectacles on the bedside table.

The pace is slower, so much so, that in an attempt to tame the beeline movements that become instinctive in London throngs, I developed a stutter to my walk. Unable to quite standstill, to an onlooker this may well have looked like I was perpetually in search of somewhere to urinate.

There is no twilight hour in Hackney - never more than a minute passes without noise. The window rarely lasts beyond a drawn-out blood vesseled blink, thirty seconds at most. The last door shuts, the last fox emits, the last brown rat scuttles into the Thames, before the phlegm of the next day rises and splutters.

In Berlin it is silent, disregarding the occasional loose comment by the ancient water pipes in the corner. The city doesn’t feel empty or have the baying menace - the that bear could stand up any minute and then he’d be really fucking huge – that London can portray when it falls silent.

TBC...

Food in Berlin

Berlin's restaurants can occasionally deliver a delight, yet the city lacks the impetus and creativity of London's kitchens. I've had a few memorable experiences, but the variety, passion, expectation and interest in food, is not so apparent.

Let me start with the positives. The breads here are wonderful, notably, the infinite variety of rich rye breads . The street food is very good, everywhere and cheap. Highlights being of Turkish origin -who with their street markets and numbers, are often compared to the Indian influence in Britain.

Below, I've outlined a few reasons, which if an already disgruntled German Foodie or indeed anyone ever reads this blog, I do not adhere to be gospel.

Despite overflowing allotments suggesting otherwise, the soil that surrounds the city is apparently very poor. The couple of exceptions that thrive are conspicuous in their engulfing presence, the staples of a potatoes and sauerkraut.

The second reason is late immigration. In the 1950s and 1960s, London was blessed with the benefits of Indian, Pakistan and West Indian immigration, who brought with them a rich heritage of food. Berlin, at that time had many refugees who used the city as a base camp, before planning the expedition into western Europe. This quickly changed with the 'moving of the goal posts', well, actually that should read, the "obliteration of the goalposts, bringing with it utter disillusionment in humanity' - the building of the Berlin wall. The economic crisis that ensued meant that Berlin's biggest immigrant population, the Turkish, didn't arrive till the early seventies, when shortage of labour led to policies to integrate Greek, Yugoslavian and Turkish workers.

The third, fourth and fifth reason, is Currywurst. If smoking is detrimental to your palette, Currywurst must be like crude oil to the feathers of a seabird.

The sixth reason. the loosest of the half dozen arguments is Lidl. I haven’t got a problem with Lidl itself; it obviously has has its place in the market. My problem is that every Tom, Dick and Harry, or should I say, Klaus, Gunter and Dietmar of the German supermarket business, have opened supermarkets based on the notion Lidl is a universal brand of fod retailing excellence. Three examples being Netto, Aldi and PennyMarket, the latter being so horrendous, that in the throes of hunger I thought about smashing a glass jar containing grey Frankfurters and 'glassing' my own jugular.