St Petersburg, but not in a nutshell

If there is one thing completely impossible, it's fitting St Petersburg into a nutshell. The city is vast, the streets are wide and royal and impressive. I don't know why I was expecting it to be quaint and cute and PEDESTRIANISED. Huge mistake.

Quaintest street we could find. Though still not pedestrianised.

Go to St Petersburg and you will walk. A lot. And travel. A lot. This was the one of the things none of the online guides mentioned. Most of the things they did mention, however, turned out to be incorrect. 

(Which was a relief, mostly. I got a bit miffed, you see, reading everywhere that St Petersburg is an unfriendly place, having booked this trip based on a romantic notion of snow covered Russian orthodox church rooftops and grand (yet pedestrianised!) streets. This was the place I had always wanted to visit, and the first holiday-without-twins for me, and I was going to be barked at by everyone?) 

 

Russian orthodox church rooftops, snow optional.

So, as a counter-intelligence exercise, I have made a list of the things travel guides tell you about St Petersburg that are not true.

A trio of carrot soups

What to do with a stack of beautiful, leftover multi-coloured carrots?

I couldn't stand the thought of mixing them up, creating a brown, unintelligible mush, ruining their vibrant colours. Having just been to Pauly Saal, the Michelin starred restaurant in Mitte, where they served pumpkin with pumpkin and pumpkin, the way high end restaurants tend to do, I decided to go for a trio of carrot soups. 

Eat a lot: RisOtto, Mitte

I'm feeling kind of special today.

It turns out I'm living in the city that houses the very first risotto restaurant in the world. Who knew?

I wonder if it's true. (It seems highly unlikely. The first ever risotto restaurant, well, ever?)

I wonder if it's any good. (Though risotto in the average restaurant is almost never a total disaster, it's usually not particularly good either. Ever since I discovered even celebrity chefs can't get it right on the night (yes, Tom Aikens, I am talking about you and your undercooked attempt), I've stuck to the homemade variety where I can be sure the timing is just so.)

I wonder if the world has gone off risotto, seeing as there was not a single person inside.

If you don't mind, I'll leave it to other people to answer the above questions for me.

RisOtto, Friedrichstraße 115, 10117 Berlin, 0173 7171626, ros-otto.de, open Mon-Fri 11 am - 9pm, Sat 12pm - 6pm

Eat a lot: Kaffee Mitte, Mitte

The old adagio: when in Berlin, do as the Berliners do, doesn't do in Kaffee Mitte.

I have passed this place many times but I never managed to make it inside until now. Sometimes it was too busy, sometimes I was too busy, sometimes it just wasn't the right time for a Kaffee mit Kuchen.

But I was wrong there. This is not a Kaffee mit Kuchen kind of place. It's a mediterranean hangout, where Italian seems to be the language of choice, the sandwiches are made by a tattooed, pierced barman wearing a blond wig and most of the guests seem to be best friends - of each other, the staff or the resident dog at least.

The sandwiches they serve for lunch are a tad pricy. Four euro for what essentially is a piece of bread with a drizzle of oil, some rocket and a sparing scattering of cheese seems a bit far-fetched, even when in Mitte. But oh, how good that sandwich was. Crunchy yet chewy, salty and oily in just the right amounts, with a perfect little salad to polish it all off.

It made me forget about the fairly silly self service system where you order at the bar, get an electronic device that lights up when your order is done (we didn't get our device, but luckily our order found its way to us thanks to one of the many hanger outers at the bar) and you even have to put away your own dishes.

What I liked most of all is the proper Italian breakfast they serve in the morning: a cappuccino with a cornetto (€3,80). Next time I am in Berlin Mitte at breakfast time, I will do as the Romans do, and head to Kaffee Mitte for my fill.

Kaffee Mitte, Weinsmeisterstraße 9A, 10178 Berlin, 030 24038204, website, open Mon-Fri 8am - 8pm, Sat 9am - 8pm, Sun 10am - 8pm

A foodie at the Fruitlogistica fair

Last week I went to the Fruitlogistica fair in the Berlin Messe. Incognito, as I am not a fruit or veg producer, nor a fresh produce buyer at a supermarket or a kitchen manager at a large hospital. 

Fruitlogistica is a large trade fair for just those people, people who get food on to the plates (or into the shopping trolleys) of the masses. The exhibitors are producers of food and processors of food, and also companies who make great big machines that help produce and process the foods.

I felt a bit like a tourist and had a whale of a time. I posed with the big pear outside, chatted to stall holders about their red carrots (from Pakistan), pink lettuce (from Italy) and baby white cabbages (from the Netherlands) and gawked at complicated bits of machinery. I ate tiny slivers of apple and a fascinating fruit called 'sapodilla' which looked like a mousey brown plum but tasted somewhere between a banana and a kiwi. If that is even possible.

 

Couldn't help myself

Here's a bit of a tour for you. The Louvre is wasn't but if you're into your food, it's a Grand Day Out all the same.

 

Cool cabbages from Italy

Where the Dutch tried to impress with potatoes, LED lights and endless cups of coffee...

Potato globe

Pink LED lights by Philips for extra fast growth, apparently. Bit scary though.

 ... the Italians had readymade soups, Ferrari's and wine at 11 am:

Soup-in-a-bag

Italians on a mission: how can you fail to impress when you bring a Ferrari?

The Malaysians and the Senegalese fought over pineapple property, while the Pakistani and the Japanese introduced some new kids on the block:

The packaging on offer was even more colourful that the fruit:

A melon dressed up as cheese

Oodles of pretty packaging options

Labels galore

Asian grape packet

There were things I instantly wanted to take home with me: 

Bachelor pad perfect

Stylish if somewhat perishable way to display kiwi fruit

And those things I never even knew existed:

Clever tree tepees for saving water

Environmentally friendly weed control machine

• 

A bundling machine tying anything and everything together with a bow on top

A few days later, all I have left is a stack of leaflets and a ripened Sapodilla. I do hope all that fruit that was on display has found a good home somewhere... I like the idea of Berlin's homeless gorging themselves on Senegalese pineapples and Portugese berries!

Sapodilla fruit

 Fruitlogistica, Messe Berlin, 4-6 February 2015

Powdered chocolate pots

Being a person who likes her food, I have certain rules and conventions to follow. A major rule is that, as a food lover, you're supposed to steer well clear of anything from a packet. 

Packets are blasphemy in the church of the food fanatic. Packets are deadly for the taste buds, full of rubbish ingredients and horribly lacking in the pure and natural department. They're the equivalent of fake Christmas trees. They're like wine from a carton. Evil, is what packets are.

Needless to say, when I came across this pretty packet, promising molten chocolate pots in a mere 90 seconds, I had to buy it.

All you have to do is tip the powder into a cup, mix it with water and cook it in the microwave (another one of those no no's in foodie wonderland) for a minute and a half.

It came out perfectly fluffy, complete with molten centre. It was delicious, dry and sweet. The whole thing was prepped, cooked and eaten within 5 minutes. 

What's not to like? Pure, schmure. I'm going to get myself another packet of this.

Tüpfelchen Taschenkuchen Schokolade, €1,59 per packet (for one cake), Butlers

Eat a lot: Oliv, Mitte

Yesterday I met my friend Anna for lunch at Oliv. Rumour had it that Oliv's quite good, and Google Reviews confirmed those rumours, giving the place a 4.2 out of 5 stars.

Promises promises.

The venue, both outside and in, has a déjà vu feeling about it. The olive trees and plants near the door reminded me of a London flower shop. The 'no prams' sign and steep coffee prices (€3 for a flat white) made me wonder if I had wandered into a newly opened The Barn by mistake. The whole of it suggested a certain worldly sophistication that seems harder and harder to get away from, in Mitte or elsewhere in the city.

(Anna and I wondered whether the 'no prams' thing is a clever way to keep babies out rather than prams. We brought one in (a baby, not a pram) and weren't sent away or looked at funny, so maybe in the case of Oliv, it is a space issue, after all.)

Wooden blocks serve as seats, the kitchen is open for all to see staff doing their thing (or in our case, dropping their wares on several occasions). The menu, in German and English, was minimalist and non-specific. Sure, you pay €10,40 for a plate of lettuce and cold vegetables, but no details on the kinds of vegetables or the types of lettuce leaves were given. When I asked what kinds of quiche they had, the answer was brief too: tomato, broccoli or courgette. 

 

Call me old-fashioned, but with prices like that, I like to know what I am getting.

When peeking inside the kitchen, I realised the minimalist description wasn't actually far off. They were making quiches (a tomato and an aubergine one) and indeed, the base and filling looked identical, with a simple topping of a single veg on top. Minimalist indeed. But then, why tinker with a good quiche?

The quiche tasted fine. A buttery base, a nicely seasoned filling and some broccoli on top. Nothing more, nothing less. For dessert we had more flat whites, a German crumbly Blechkuchen with plum and an apple crumble in a little glass pot. They were fine too, though not above the level of an average Backshop. I didn't ask how much they cost, just to make sure it wouldn't spoil my appetite for something sweet.

It's hard to rate places like Oliv. They're nice enough and clearly appeal to the Google crowd, hence the 4.2 stars online. But they are so familiar, in every way, that you forget what you had and how it tasted as soon as you walk out the door. Actually, I am sure I have been to the exact same place before, but cannot remember if it was called Oliv then. What I will remember, this time, is the bill. There is much better food to be had for that price in this great town. All you have to do is ignore the obvious.

Oliv, Münzstraße 8, 10178 Berlin, 030 89206540, website, open Mon-Fri 8.30am-7pm, Sat 9.30am-7pm, Sun 10am-6pm, cash only

Drink a lot: Katie's Blue Cat, Kreuzkölln

Back in 2010, the boyfriend lived in Friedelstraße for a few months. It was a bleak and snowy winter, when cars were locked into their parking spaces by mounds of frozen snow and staying outside for more than ten minutes was out of the question. We spent a lot of time in the street itself, playing pool at the corner Kneipe and trying out the few obscure restaurants that inhabited the area.

Go to Friedelstraße now and it is absolutely teeming with life. It helps that it's summer, of course, but that is not the only reason. Nowadays the street is one big linked chain of restaurants, cutesy shops and hipster hotspots. Come winter, you can café-hop your way down the street and never even get cold.

Right at the end (from my point of view; it could also considered the beginning) of the street, in the shadow of a permanent Ausstellung of building works, there's Katie's Blue Cat. I imagine this is what comes out when you put a Stockholm fika venue, a London bakery and a 2014 Berlin hipster in a Flavour Shaker™ and shake hard: whitewashed walls, minimalist wooden benches, high-buns-shaved-sides haircuts and scones/brownies/flat whites with foam art on top. It fits the city like the comfortable, oversized jumpers worn by its patrons. This is the new Berlin venue.

Katie's Blue Cat, Friedelstraße 31, 12047 Berlin, website, open Mon-Fri 8.30am-6.30pm, Sat-Sun 10am-7pm

Eat a lot: Golgatha, Viktoriapark, Kreuzberg

Golgatha, Viktoriapark, entrance via Katzbachstraße (near Monumentenstraße), 10965 Berlin, website, open April - end of September (weather permitting till end of October) from 9am till late.

Pauls Liegewiese, Park am Gleisdreieck, Kreuzberg

Das Park am Gleisdreieck was one of the last large open spaces in Berlin's city centre to be filled (the Tempelhofer Feld being, perhaps, the sole exception). Once an area where a load of train lines converged into a triangle of rails, it was bombed heavily during the Second World War only to be forgotten about for decades. Now a modern, clean and spaceous park, it feels the complete opposite to its previous state of mysteriously overgrown wrought iron glory. 

With the arrival of companies, people and money to Berlin in general and Kreuzberg and Schöneberg in particular, it was only a matter of time before the Gleisdreieck area was spruced up. And boy, did they spruce it up. The park looks beautiful, albeit a tad too 'designed', and offers something for everyone. Playgrounds, swings, a skatepark, pretty benches, shade and grass and gravel. Naturally, it also houses several cafés.

At Pauls Liegewiese, you can rent deck chairs but most people seem to stop over for the Wiener sausages with bread (€2,20). They make a decent coffee, have one of those huge chuppachup holders with hundreds of lollies and serve homemade chilli con carne for €2,50. No alcoholic drinks though, a Fritz Limo or ice cream will have to do. A great place to watch the yummy mums go by and pick up some skateboarding slang in the process.

 

Pauls Liegewiese, Park am Gleisdreieck, next to the skaterpool and the basketball field, website, open Mon-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-7pm.