Another Restaurant We (Probably) Won't Be Eating At

Jay Rayner, a food critic at the Guardian, had an unusual experience at a Chinese restaurant which he felt worthy of a blog-post the other day. To summarize, he ate at a place, liked it very much, decided to review it, and was shocked when the paper's photographer was denied permission to photograph it. Poor Jay can't imagine why this happened, why this Szechuanese restaurant (or maybe not: see the comments) didn't want his publicity.

I sure can. And I say this as a former professional restaurant reviewer myself.

Ethnic restaurants are often there primarily to provide a service for an ethnic clientele, a taste of home far from home, a place where people not living in the extended families they came from can enjoy Mom's (or Grandma's) cooking, as best it can be replicated elsewhere. I don't know London well, so I can't say if Bethnal Green is a part of town with a large recently-arrived Chinese immigrant population, but it's entirely possible that it is. Rayner makes the point that he and his companion were the only two non-Chinese in the place. Well, yes. And while I'm willing to assume that Rayner knows his Chinese food, I'm far from willing to make that assumption when it comes to his foodie readership. If a lot of them show up, they're likely to stick to a few dishes, or even complain if what they get isn't to their taste. Like the guy who owns the joint should care.

This, Rayner should realize, is what reviews do. I remember when a friend's restaurant got a four-star review in the San Francisco Chronicle: he said it was the worst day of his life there. They were mobbed for about a month with people who never came back but made insane demands on them anyway. The regulars were driven away because they couldn't get in. And, of course, after the sheep headed to the next hot place, they were empty. He and the crew solved this by going to places in town where they were known and ordering a beer or a sandwich or something and loudly going "Wow, I'm sure glad the rush from the Chronicle review is over" so that word got out that they'd like to see some familiar old faces in the place.

There's also a more sinister possibiltiy to why Gourmet San's proprietor doesn't want attention. On the corner near my old place, where White Trash started, there was, for many years, a restaurant called Kaiser des Chinas, which was so bad even Germans wouldn't eat there -- or, not twice. But it was huge, and it stayed open for years, even though hardly anyone went there. One morning I went to take out the trash, and in the trash bin were a bunch of waiters' wallets -- empty. I wondered where they'd come from, then, later that day, noticed that Kaiser des Chinas wasn't open. There was no note on the door or anything. And it stayed closed. Then, when Wally was moving White Trash in there, I stopped to say hi, and asked him if he had a clue what had happened. "Not really, but they got out in a hurry. Here, come in the kitchen." And there, in a long line of bowls, were things like mushrooms and onions and so on, all withered up, but all measured out as they would be if an order came in.

I mentioned this later to someone who knew a bit about the Berlin underbelly, and he said "Of course, don't you know how places like that work? They open up, they've got, say, eight staff, all of whom have legal ID they've acquired legally. But they count on the inability of the Berlin cops to recognize other races: they all look alike to them, so that although there's a guy with a card that says Li Weng, Li's cleared out long ago to another city, and an illegal immigrant has taken his place. As soon as the organization's found a place for New Li Weng, another one takes his place. It's not only the Chinese and Vietnamese places, the Indian ones do this, too." Legal Li probably has a way to replace his "lost" papers once he gets to Cologne or whatever the next stop is, and he's now a step up in the organization. That also explains why the food in these places is no good: they're not predominantly interested in the restaurant business, so they all work off the same template of recipes.

I prefer to think that Gourmet San is like many another ethnic restaurant: they welcome knowledgeable non-ethnic patrons, because they're there for the food, not because it's a hot new place someone's discovered. They treat the proprietors and other patrons with respect, and don't impose cultural stereotypes on their experience there. This goes equally for the Indian guy who goes to a good French restaurant and the British patron who walks in Gourmet San's doors. (And, although I don't want to get into German-bashing just now, it's part of the reason why there are so very few good ethnic restaurants in Berlin). And, the title of this post notwithstanding, I'd go there, especially if I could go with, say, Fuchsia Dunlop, whose amazing Szechuan cookbook has provided me with a disproportionate number of good meals since I bought it. (And I suggest you click the link and get it yourself). Or with anyone else who spoke either Szechuan or Mandarin.

Finally, a word of advice for Mr. Rayner: any restaurant reviewer who doesn't want to get "rumbled," as he says, shouldn't allow his or her photo to appear anywhere, ever. This is such a basic thing that I'm amazed I was staring at his face right there on the top of the page. But that's part and parcel of why he was shocked Gourmet San didn't want his review: he's under the impression it's about him. And it's not.

(Thanks to bowleserised for the tip!)

The Missing Link

When I stuck a teaser in my post of a couple of days ago for yesterday's anniversary post, I promised an amusing link to go with it. And no, the picture of Öoby Döbi with hair was not it.

What it was was this article, which the Pope dug up from who knows where. It's an inadvertantly revealing look at a lot of the places I knew early in my Berlin experience, although the article was published a year before I'd ever set foot here. One reason I was so familiar with these places is that both the guy I rented from and his girlfriend and the Times Berlin bureau were on Grolmanstr., so it was natural to go to dinner at Florian (which was still good the last time I was there), or to grab a drink at one of the bars, although the most picturesque, Zwiebelfisch, I wasn't introduced to for some years, because you really should go in there for the first time with a regular -- it's that kind of place. Another place I didn't get to until much later was the last-named, Galerie Bremer, where I went with some of my colleagues at Jazz Radio, back when we were all getting along. I doubt it still exists in the same form, but what an unusual -- and perfectly West Berlinisch -- place!

Anyway, there's hip! edgy! Berlin from twenty years ago. Oh, how times have changed. Not for the better or worse. Just changed.

Food Again (And Drink)

Before I utterly forget everything about last week, I should stick some of my food notes here.

One big difference between this trip and the previous ones was that after my first night, I moved into a thing called MySuiteInn, way out on a traffic circle about 30 minutes' walk or a 10 minute bus-ride (when the buses weren't on strike, and between 6:30 am and 8pm) from the center of town. Across the circle was a big Champion supermarket, hardly upscale, but nonetheless superior to anything in Berlin. As I said before, not paying ten or 12 euros for breakfast was a good deal (although I spent the same amount getting back there at night with a taxi). The French have little ready-made toasts called petits pains which can be spread with cream cheese or jam, and their yoghurt is immeasurably better than German yoghurt -- even the commercial stuff.

I had several lunches at the Vert Anglais in the Place Castellane, where Nick the owner is trying to punch up his lunch business. I ate there not just to support him, but because, as I said last time I was down, it's really good. Their salades composées are superb, although the Caesar needs work (and I've already e-mailed him my Caesar dressing recipe, so if he uses it, it'll be the first public place you can taste it, since the other place is on Bob Dylan's tours). There's also a Vert Anglais burger I'm anxious to try, and a cold pile of shrimp which looks like it'd hit the spot.

The best dinner was private, cooked by Miss Expatria one evening. Not only is she a good cook, but she's good company, as is Bart. She improvised a pasta sauce from some tiny tomatoes, a French concoction called farce which is a ready-made meat mixture you can use to stuff tomatoes or peppers, some fresh basil, and some red chiles.

My regular fave, Bistrot d'Alco, was closed for vacation, but I hit La Chêneraie (excellent, although I thought I'd taken notes as to what I had and didn't) and L'Escalier (my last meal in town, it was a perfectly-cooked onglet de boeuf with a stupendous wine-and-shallot reduction preceded by a soupe de poisson that wasn't anywhere near that at La Tomate from last visit). It's still astonishing to me that you can get out of one of these places for around €20 for two courses and wine and I found myself wondering what some of the slightly higher-priced places would be like. I'm sure I'll have a chance to find out some day.

There were also a couple of new places. At one point I developed a swelling of my gums on one side of my jaw which vanished as quickly as it came, but sure was a drag while it hung around, so I went looking for stuff that was soft. One idea someone floated past me was to get mussels, so I headed to the place he recommended, Chez Elia, which looks like a Brazilian restaurant and, in fact, is, since Elia herself is Brazilian and half the menu is things like feijoiada. I had moules Provençal, which was mussels cooked in Pernod with minced fennel strewn in it. Excellent, and only 11 euros. I'm told that Elia and her French husband are moving back to Brazil in December, so catch this place when you can.

The other sore-gums place was someplace nobody I'd talked to had ever been, La Ferme, which drew me in by offering tartiflette, a dish of baked sliced potatoes cooked in cream with bits of ham in it and hunks of cheese melted over it. Not hardly a summer dish, but I was hurting, and it was soft. It was served with a separate plate of ham and dry sausage and salad, and hit the spot, although before recommending this place to the less dentally-challenged, I'd want to try something else, too.

But the place I'm most anxious to try again was the one everyone referred to as the New Bar because it had just opened. If I've got my bearings on the map right, it's on the rue St-Côme, near another standby bar of the expat community, Mi Barrio. It's got a name -- something to do with Léon, probably Chez Léon -- but people are probably going to wind up calling it something else. It's run by an affable Spaniard, Manu, and his family, and is notable by its long awning with the words "Restaurant Agricole" on it, as well as the boxes of fresh produce -- potatoes, onions -- sitting right on the curb. Just about everything is organic, there are plants on the tables -- ours had fresh oregano and a chili plant -- and besides huge salads and cold soups, it has a prominent rotisserie which, on the night I was there, was turning out lamb, chicken, and rabbit. I started off with a salad that combined tiny strawberries, cubes of watermelon, and a slice of pineapple (probably not locally grown, ahem) with a dressing of crème fraiche and fresh spearmint. I don't even like watermelon and I ate it all. After that, on everyone's urging (we were a party of about nine), I got the lamb, mostly because I usually don't like it, and everyone was raving about it. It came accompanied by a bowl of roasted vegetables which had been strewn on the floor of the rotisserie, absorbing the fats from the roasting meats. There were also jars of mustards, including a grape mustard which married well with the meat and the superb house red, which was fruity and light, a perfect summer red. Once again, the price was amazingly low. I wish these folks luck, because I'm selfish: I want to revisit this place often.

I may never straighten out all the Languedoc wines in my head, although I'm going to make a concerted effort, since so many of them are phenomenal and way underpriced. My favorite for some years has been Mas de la Seranne, from the village of Aniane, not far away. There was a British importer, Pic Wines, which was bringing it to England, but they went out of business earlier this year, so the only way to get it now is to get it in France. They make several cuvées, from the cheapo €5.60 Ombre des Figuiers ("Shadow of the Fig-trees") to the mezzo €12.60 Clos des Immortelles to a few more above that. The idea that I could live in a place where I could just pick up a bottle of that stuff for less than six euros is almost enough to make the move worthwhile right there. Admittedly, my tastes are very New World, and this is a big, fruity, start with a dazzling number of complexities (the more you pay, the bigger the after-show on your tongue is) afterwards that I still haven't gotten a fix on.

On this trip, I also discovered an even more local wine, Terre Megere, but I've yet to find it in a shop, so I'm not at all sure what it costs or what varieties it comes in. This is an actual Montpellier wine from Cournonsec, less than ten miles to the southwest. Google gets me all kinds of people selling it in Britain and elsewhere, but the exact bottle I tried doesn't seem to be among the reds and whites they have listed. The distinguishing feature of the label was that it looked like it had had dirt splashed on it, carefully printed on.

But my best discovery came on not this trip, but the last one. I'm not the kind of hearty drinker many of my friends at the Vert Anglais are, especially before a meal, but I did want to be sociable. I was about to order a Campari and soda, but thought, wait a minute, I'm in France. Surely there's something local that's comprarable. Jody the barman brought out a couple of shot glasses of possibilities, a vermouth (too sweet) and a ghastly-looking substance which he said was called Suze. Nicely bitter, with a hint of sweetness, and a really complex taste (it's made from gentian root, of all things, and is a bizarre psychedelic yellow color) which unpacked after he'd poured some Perrier onto it and tossed in a couple of thin slices of lemon, it's low-alcohol enough that it doesn't destroy your head or your tongue before dinner. I also had the distinct advantage of the fact that nobody else at the bar liked it, but I wound up drinking enough of it over the space of these two visits that the bottle was drained. I assume it had been tapped before, but I'm not sure if Nick will order another (he really detests it) until I actually get an apartment down there. Still, sitting in the shade, coming off of a 90-degree day, hanging out with good folks and watching the street-life of Montpellier at the end of a workday, it's a good drink to sip.

Can't find it in Berlin. Time to move.

Autumn Crumbs

Some interesting developments around here which'll have to wait until around the end of the week to be revealed (mais, hélas, pas des nouvelles de France), but a couple of things in the meanwhile.

* * *

First bit of news is that yesterday, the New York Times actually published an (almost) accurate, well-informed article about Berlin. As the author notes, he did some growing up here, so he's not just another ignoramus flying in and hitting a few hot-spots and crowing about the hip! edgy! Berlin. He's somehow moved Tacheles to Prenzlauer Berg, but I wonder how the representation of Berlin in New York is going to square with that show at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, which I still haven't seen. I have a feeling they've done more than just move Tacheles up the hill, so to speak...

* * *

A bunch of you may have gotten invitations from me to join Shelfari, a new online community/social networking site devoted to reading. A whole bunch of you, in fact. I apparently sent out about a thousand invites to all my "friends" in my gmail address book. I'm happy to say I'm not the only one, since this poor guy got caught before I did and wrote a nicely humorous piece about it.

What's even worse is that at least 50 of these people have accepted "my" invitation, and Shelfari makes it almost impossible to figure out who they are. Very few of them are people I correspond with regularly -- or even remember. It doesn't help that I get an e-mail from Shelfari headed "Bill F has accepted your invitation," because that's how people are listed there. Bill F? The worst was Park S, which has me awake at night fearing that I've befriended the entire population of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

At any rate, if you got one of these, and if you decide to join, please read that article before you start inviting folks to join you. A very poorly designed website.

* * *

Speaking of books, though, I've added a widget to this page (it's way down there) that has the perhaps incomprehensible for some of you word Wunchzettel on it. This is my Amazon.de wish list, added just in time for my birthday on Friday and, of course, Christmas coming up. It's as much recommendations for books I haven't read as a wish-list, though. And yeah, a lot of cookbooks up there. Because, among other things, Christmas is a rather festive season in these parts, and I wind up doing a bunch of cooking for people. And, of course, myself.

* * *

Finally, speaking of food, not catering my next party (and not just because I'd want to do it myself) will be these folks. Honestly, y'all, learn the lesson of that famous American metal band Das Damen and research the foreign language you're using first.

A Blog Is Born

What are the odds that two people, both named Ward, would live within a couple of blocks of each other in Berlin? Josh Ward and I aren't related, but we do share a deep interest in food and cooking, and a few weeks ago, Josh came up with an idea for a blog aimed at helping English-speakers in Berlin cope with reproducing their favorite things in Germany. The idea is to provide information on ingredients, report on sources, investigate what's at the markets, and in general make life easier for folks who like to cook. The emphasis will be on cooking, and not on restaurants, although you can bet that if we ever find edible Mexican food for sale somewhere here we'll make a big noise about it, and frankly, if that really is a Malian imbiss going in down the street from me -- as it seems to be -- where the old Chinese one was, I'm going to report on that, too.

The blog is very much still under construction, both graphically and conceptually, and Josh has been slightly hampered, too, by the birth of a daughter who's been variously described as "beautiful" and "looks just like Josh," which is certainly confusing.

At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, here it is, Hungry In Berlin

The Hidden Killer

Last Saturday, because we found ourselves each in possession of a couple of extra Euros that would permit a very inexpensive restaurant meal, the dancer and I decided to try the new ramen joint next door to Cuchi, the superb sushi place on Gipsstr. After all, it was under the same management, and ramen can be a wonderful experience.

Sad to say, this place wasn't. My soup was pretty bare-bones. Although there was some pickled ginger in it, and, unlike the place we usually go, there were the right condiment-adding things (chili and black sesame, a sesame-seed grinder) on the table, it just wasn't very interesting. Hers was even weirder: although I don't think any tomato was involved, it was very much like a thin version of spaghetti bolognaise, with ground pork and a reddish broth. Both soups had corn in them, which didn't endear the place to me.

But about three-quarters of the way through her soup, the dancer suddenly pivoted on her butt and lay down. (Fortunately, as she noted later, we had benches; otherwise she would have fallen out of her chair). "It's my circulation," she said. "It's just dropped way down." She was sweating and pale. Now, I know that every medical crisis in Germany is "circulation," just as every medical crisis in France is "liver," but I had a more exact diagnosis: MSG poisoning. Hardly surprising, of course, because MSG is a crucial part of Japanese cuisine, the "fifth taste," umami, and something you expect to encounter. You do not, however, expect to pass out as a result of eating it.

Eventually, she sat up and sipped some water the solicitous waitress brought over, and found the strength to get up and leave. We walked around for a while so she could get her "circulation" back up, and finally got her to the U-Bahn, where she headed straight home and to bed. And, she reported the next morning, felt fine.

What happened wasn't a "drop in circulation," though, but a spike in blood-pressure. I have high blood pressure, so I try to minimize my MSG intake as best I can because it (and, of course, all other sodium, like salt) will raise your blood pressure. Certainly I've always been sensitive to MSG, and that night, I, too, had symptoms of muscles bunching up and a sort of caffeinated feeling, lying buzzing for a couple of hours before sleep came.

The thing is, though, although few people realize it, MSG is everywhere in Germany. It's not just in the fake "Asia" food, or even the authentic Asian food; it's found its way into German food so pervasively that I often avoid eating in German restaurants. I read labels of all prepared food products. It really is everywhere.

What I'm looking for in the supermarket is "Geschmackverstärker E 621," which is in just about every brand of canned soup (which are already hideously oversalted), in plenty of sausages (I no longer buy from butcher counters if I can't read the labels), in the formerly delicious smoked pork chops known as Kassler, in some brands of Maultaschen (those fantastic overstuffed pillows of pasta, one of my favorite discoveries in Germany), prepared chicken broth (Fond), and even in such weird places as black olives.

But at the restaurants, I'm helpless. What has happened over the past couple of decades is that restaurants have stopped making their own sauces, using cheats marketed by food giants like Maggi and Knorr. No doubt they cheated before with other prepared products, but both Maggi and Knorr base their entire product line on MSG, and their offering up condensed sauce bases that a good cook could make from scratch in a couple of hours has ruined German food. Nor can you assume that you're safe at a high-end restaurant: friends of mine report strong MSG reactions after eating in some of Berlin's toniest joints.

Germans are notorious for the amount of salt they consume. My doctor tells me that the numbers for high blood pressure are adjusted upwards in Germany, because numbers that would cause concern elsewhere are fairly normal here. And no wonder: from the Wurst you eat for breakfast to the Döner Kebap you have for lunch, to the schnitzel with gravy you have for dinner -- not to mention the Bratkartoffeln and green beans boiled with Speck you eat alongside it -- you're at the minimum getting a ton of salt, and almost always even more sodium courtesy of the MSG in all that stuff.

The folks at the Wurst counter don't know what's in the sausages -- and, worse, they won't go look -- and in restaurants you can't even assume the server will ask the cook, or, if they do, that they'll tell you the truth. Is it any wonder German food has the awful reputation is does? People go to a restaurant to eat something that sounds excellent on the page, and wind up dizzy or otherwise distressed afterwards.

Anyway, I'll continue to make occasional visits to the ramen place on Alte Schönhauser, fully aware of what's in the soup, but my desire to eat out elsewhere is always tinged with apprehension. I wonder if any of the other diners at this new place had a similar reaction, and, if so, how many will have to pass out before the owners decide it might be a good idea to cut the aiji-no-moto in half.

Clash Of The Organic Titans

For a city that doesn't like food, Berlin's sure got some action on that front these days. Maybe it's just the dream of grabbing the tourist dollar, but a lot of new restaurants and delis (many with the inevitable English "Free Wireless Internet" signs) seem to be opening up, and not just the faux-French ones I commented on a while ago.

More to the point for residents, though, is the war shaping up on and near Senefelderplatz in Prenzlauer Berg, where two well-funded organic food shops are practically next-door neighbors.

It started about a year ago, when viv BioFrischMarkt opened pretty much next door to the former Polish Consulate, which is now a (very good) pizzeria. It wasn't one shop, but three: a Drogerie (a term meaning basically a drugstore only without drugs: cosmetics, brushes, stuff like that), a "Lounge" (ie, a restaurant-cafe), and the aforementioned BioFrischMarkt. I investigated the latter, of course, and found it a nice, if unexciting, health food store. (A note on the term "Bio," incidentally. It does not mean "organic." That's öko. Bio is a step just below. It could be that the EU has more stringent "organic" labelling laws than the U.S., too, and for something to be öko it's got to jump through more hoops. My readers being who they are, I'm sure we'll all find out in the comments section soon...) One decided advantage was that it didn't have That Smell. I don't know what it is, but it's found in most health food stores. (Some speculate it's from brewer's yeast, which might be true). But it also didn't have anything particularly interesting that would induce me to walk all the way over there.

Then, on the triangle of land where Kollwitzstr. and Schönhauser Allee come together, an apartment building started going up. As soon as the outer walls were firm enough to hold it, a big vinyl sign announced that LPG would soon open "Europe's largest Biomarkt." And open they did, albeit a month later than announced, and, being bored, I decided to head up there this afternoon and see if they'd started fighting yet. (Two Italian restaurants in my neighborhood once had a showdown with knives right in the middle of the street, after all, so I was wondering if mellow organic German hippies might become similarly riled).

Well, LPG's new store may be the largest in "Europe" until tomorrow, when Whole Foods London opens up (unless England's no longer part of Europe: it's been a while since I've been there). But, more to the point, it's not much more exciting than viv is. Oh, it's got an escalator you can take your shopping cart on. But so does that supermarket in the suburbs I visit with friends when Heribert Kastell gets a wild hair and sells wine in the mall. It's got organic frozen pizza, so they know their neighborhood (I estimate that around dinner-time, at least 30% of my neighbors on any given evening are cooking frozen pizza). It's got a good selection of organic wines and beers -- every organic beer I've seen in Germany, in fact, is in stock. It's got lots and lots of potatoes and not very many green vegetables, and lots and lots of bread. Upstairs, it's got a lot of stuff in jars (including -- gack! -- natto), but, the Japanese stuff (yes, natto!) aside, nothing else exotic, not even Indian stuff, which is the backbone of a lot of organic food stores these days, Indian food being heavily vegetarian and all. And while viv segregates its Drogerie in a separate shop, LPG segregates what looks like a women's-and-children's store with low internal walls, which I found distinctly unfriendly.

Now, maybe it's because I grew up with Whole Foods in Austin (John Mackey ran the organic grocery store a block from my house before he joined with the others to open the first Whole Foods down the hill), and have sort of internalized their philosophy, but the reason I'm not moved to consider either viv or LPG for my shopping is simple: their stock is boring. Whole Foods always introduced new items, and always had someone on hand with samples. There was, eventually, a sampling station where either a WF team member (they don't call them employees) or a representative of the product being sampled could stand and give stuff away. This meant that people were gradually introduced to new flavors, and, over time, added them to their shopping lists. I remember when Dean (the vegetable guy -- now a vice president) introduced me to jicama. If jicamas didn't weigh about ten pounds I'd have had one on call all the time: that stuff's good.

But Germans, by and large, don't like variety in their food, and certainly don't like trying unfamiliar things: someone giving away samples of something unusual would probably stand there all day watching the stuff go bad. If the local cuisine (which is not to say I mean all German cuisine by this, just the local variety) were something precious, I'd say this is a good thing: this is how traditions get preserved. But it always disheartens me to realize that the yuppies who, by and large, make up the Prenzlauer Berg population may be young, may be affluent, but they really don't have any interest in expanding their culinary boundaries past German and their conception of Italian food. LPG isn't going to challenge that, nor is viv. And Whole Foods, during their promotional blitz for their London flagship, announced that, while Europe is definitely on the list to conquer, Germany, in particular is not.

The other thing that'll discourage me from LPG is that it's yet another extremely expensive co-op. Check out the membership costs: €51.13 to join (and where'd they pull that number from?), and €17.90 per month for a normal adult, €12.78 for low-income and unemployed adults. A single person would have to do a lot of shopping there to make that worthwhile -- and, like I said, the stock doesn't invite that.

Not my problem, anyway. There's no way to get to either place with public transit, which means I'd have to walk. I've got two places (with That Smell) within a couple of blocks, although I rarely shop at them, either. But lifestyle wars like this do interest me, so let's see who's the fittest and who'll survive. And if the knives come out.

Requiem For Mickey D

Saturday night I was invited to dinner at the dancer's house, way down in Tempelhof, and after the thunderstorms cleared, I started walking. It's only about three miles, and economics dictated shank's mare. This meant walking over to Friedrichstr. and then walking the entire length of the street, which is usually fascinating, because after Checkpoint Charlie it turns into a fairly tawdry, largely Turkish/Arab neighborhood, a part of Berlin the tourists don't see. That culminates in a really seedy housing project at Hallesches Tor, after which you cross over onto Mehringdamm, and into the old Kreuzberg 61.

Anyway, I'd no sooner started out than I got a rude shock. The McDonald's on Friedrichstr. was gone. A sign for some GastroImmo firm announced it was for rent.

Although I'd never patronized the place, the McDonald's was a landmark. Visitors coming to my place via the U-Bahn would always get the same instructions: "Okay, take the U-Bahn to Oranienburger Tor station" -- and then I'd have to spell Oranienburger, of course, down to the last letter, as if there were lots of similar stations on the line -- "and walk in the direction the train was moving and go up the stairs. Okay, now, look left and you'll see a McDonald's, so you know you're in the right place. But you walk right, towards the pizza place..."

That pizza place had been a Burger King, locked in the usual corporate war against McDonald's, but it probably lost the battle because the word got out that its upstairs bathrooms were ideal places to shoot up, and the local junkies took full advantage. (This came to light, pardon the pun, when it was announced that they'd installed black light in the bathrooms, which supposedly made it very difficult to shoot up. Why this was supposed to be so I can't say.) Then it was dozens of other things before falling into the hands of the pizza guys. But McDonald's was always buzzing. It always is in Europe: no other symbol of what makes American pop culture so desirable seems to come close. Maybe if someone would take the time and trouble to learn how to make a good hamburger on this continent this wouldn't be the case.

(Oh, and this is the place to mention that the place with the great hamburgers I wrote about some time ago, Hazelwood, on Choriner Str., has lost the chef who designed the menu, taken a swift turn towards the Deutsch, and is no longer hamburger heaven in Berlin. The chef says she's going to have another project soon, and meanwhile your indefatigable BerlinBites team is investigating several rumors of better burgers. Stay tuned.)

The thing I noticed about McDonald's is that it's a status symbol for teenagers. A Big Mac is a good deal more expensive than a Döner Kebap (€3.70 versus around €2), and that, along with your fashionable clothing, helps identify you and your posse as the cool kids you are. In Europe, that's who McDonald's seemed to be marketing to, too: in America, it seems to be younger kids, but here, the promotions were all about hit CD compilations and iTunes downloads.

So, is this changing? Or is all the construction in the immediate vicinity driving customers away? Why did McDonald's close at what would seem to me to be a perfect location -- especially given that it had traffic all the time? Did one too many Germans see Supersize Me? Do they even supersize in German McDonald's?

I mean, other than having a familiar place vanish, it's no big deal for me: I haven't eaten at McDonald's since the '70s, when one opened up on Market Street in San Francisco, the first non-freestanding McDonald's in America. At the time, I was writing for a brand new magazine called Mother Jones, whose offices were immediately above, and whose elevator was one of the slowest I've encountered outside the Communist world. (Soviet elevators are a whole 'nother tirade.) The exhaust from the McDonald's fries leaked into the vestibule, where you waited and waited for the elevator to make its mammoth three-story descent, and a certain amount of the grill odor did, too. It was like standing in the middle of a Big Mac and fries, and, like the doughnut bakery that vented directly into two (unusable) rooms in an apartment I rented in college, the smell permeated my memory to such an extent that I can taste McDonald's fries (or doughnuts) just by closing my eyes and concentrating for a couple of seconds. Plus, of course, until I moved here, there were always much better burgers to be had when I wanted them.

This leaves the pizza place, Dada Falafel (run by Iraqi refugees from Saddam), and, of course, the great YumMee bánh mi sandwich joint (now serving pho!) as the only fast-food alternatives in that vicinity. But it doesn't make the mystery of why McDonald's would vanish overnight from such a plum location any clearer.

I Might Have Dreamed This

But I'm pretty sure I didn't.

I landed in Paris Tuesday afternoon, and found the hotel I'd reserved with a service I'd never used before. Pretty dingy, as was the neighborhood, which was close to Barbes, the largely African quarter. If I'd had more time, like another day, I'd probably have gone in search of the place where a man who claimed to be "the spiritual leader of the entire Senegalese community here in Paris," told me, in perfect English, of his training with the French Air Force in Oklahoma and Texas. They had great fish baked with lemon there, and I bet they had other good stuff, too.

But I knew that in 24 hours I'd be back in a place which, next to California and Texas, would have extremely limited food options, and I wanted to celebrate the possibility of gastronomic greatness one more time. Which, considering I was in Paris, shouldn't have been too difficult.

If only. Well, okay, when I woke up from my jet-lag nap and splashed some water on my face and decided to get out of the nasty room and go look for something to eat I left my indispensable Michelin Map 11 behind, not the smartest move in a city I only know in bits and pieces.

I figured, hey, I didn't have a lot of money, so I should just find some brasserie or cheap joint with a blackboard out front with some appealing choices, go in, and enjoy myself. I was tired, I'd go back to the hotel, read a little, and pass out. Seemed like a plan. Surely the neighborhood, so close to the Gare du Nord, would have plenty of places like that.

So I walked down the street the hotel was on, the rue du Faubourg du Poissonnier. After a few blocks, I saw a tiny place that looked like it hadn't changed in fifty years, but the prices -- no "menu," or multi-course, single-price meals, a la carte only -- seemed a bit high. I glanced at it and moved on. And on.

I walked down the rue des Incredibly Fat Prostitutes and wondered whether the forty-ish men who were striking poses in Calvin Klein yuppie wear on the same block were in the same business or the girls' "business managers." I made a turn and found myself on the rue du Wholesale Clothing. I found a sign which said I was in the Marais, a neighborhood I not only know, but which is stuffed with restaurants, but I couldn't figure out where I was. An hour had passed, and I was now officially hungry, not to mention somewhat lost. But luckily, I almost always have a compass in my head, and it wasn't like I'd never been in this general neighborhood. It's just that except for kebab houses and the occasional designer sushi place, there didn't seem to be anything at all to eat.

Further walking brought me to République and loads of dining options: Quick, Mac Do, Kentucky Fried... This was getting ridiculous. I decided to head back to the hotel and hit someplace by the station. I found myself on the rue du Château d'Eau, which is one African barbershop after another, men's and women's alternating, with the expected amount of socializing. Even on a Tuesday night, it was churning. But nothing to eat.

All of a sudden, I was back on the rue du Faubourg du Poissonnier. Now, that place I'd seen hours ago -- well, 90 minutes ago -- didn't seem so intimidating. I hesitated over the menu, then said to hell with it and walked in.

The front room was very small. A tiny bar was off to the left, as well as a spiral staircase pitched so that I was praying they didn't seat customers up there. A very morose middle-aged Indochinese woman (I use the word because you could tell that the country she'd left behind when she first got to Paris was French Indochina) was bringing out some panniers of raspberries. An old woman sat on a banquette to the right wearing a fawn cloth coat which one could say had seen better days except that it was also evident that it had never been anything but drab. Next to her sprawled a large dog, boxer-like but with a graphite-colored coat. She held its head in her lap and was stroking it. Between her and the bar were the entrance to the dining room and a table loaded with stuff to be served cold: some sort of terrine, something jellied, and the berries.

A stout, no-nonsense woman with pixie glasses emerged from the dining room. "Are you still open?" I inquired. She stared at me, giving me a top-to-bottom assessment. "Of course," she said. "What are you afraid of?" Huh? Was my French that bad? "Well," I said, "I'm hungry," and she smiled and led me into the tiniest restaurant dining room I've seen. Part of the problem was a huge party of perhaps 15 people against the back wall had taken up a lot of the room. I wound up wedged over by the silverware and bread service, scrutinizing the same menu that had been posted outside. The prices were still stiff, but it seemed that you could do okay if you were careful. And surely there was a house wine so I didn't have to order a whole bottle of one of the three on offer.

So: from a very basic menu, two very basic choices. Rabbit terrine and beef Bourgignon "a la ancienne," made the old way. Like I was aware there was a new way. The stout woman's male counterpart was a short, busy man who was obviously her husband, and it was he who took my order. "No, no rabbit terrine," he said. "Poultry. Even better." His eyebrows shot up when I ordered the beef, and I asked him if there were a house red I could have a pichet of. The eyebrows went up again, and he said "Of course!"

The wine and a basket of excellent bread appeared right away. I have no idea what the wine was except I suspect it was a Bordeaux, and it was better than any house wine I'd ever had. The terrine appeared next, and it was perfect: lots of elements mixed in, pistachios and peppercorns, organ meat and meaty bits, the whole thing finishing with a slight tang of alcohol which I suspect was marc, the grape-skin liqueur. As I was savoring it, I was presented with a crock of cornichons, a touch I've never really gotten, and one I'd never seen before which was perfect: sweet-sour pickled cherries. You don't want to eat a lot of them, but they do wake up your tongue.

Monsieur appeared again to take the empty plate, and informed me, gesturing at the long table, that it would be several minutes before the next course arrived. That was fine with me. I sipped the wine, ate a bit of bread, and looked at my dining companions. I couldn't make sense out of the long table, and in fact the only definite impression I had was that I was going to bop the kid who was sitting nearest me, who took to leaning waaaay back in his chair to the point where his arms, which were behind his head when he did this, almost touched me. The group was mostly young, mostly very square-looking, and utterly forgettable. Not so the woman who was at one of the tables directly on the other side of the room from me, dining with a male companion who was impeccably dressed. She looked to be in her mid-40s, and her unlined face and high cheekbones bespoke a sense of humor and an intelligence which was telegraphed by her facial expressions on occasion as she talked with the man. She was wearing a ring with a stone which, if it were a diamond (and how can you tell from across the room?) would have kept me alive for a year. It was big enough that I wondered if it were real. Next to her were two guys, one young, one old, who were just finishing, and right by the entrance to the room was another pair of men who were always taking out hand-held devices and running figures. Both were speaking English, one with a notable French accent, one with the kind of accent native speakers get when they've been speaking another language for a long time. I never did figure out what kind of business they were in.

The Bourgignon appeared at last, and with it a round white thing with brown bits showing which turned out to be made up of potatoes, onions, and bacon, all molded into the shape of a cake layer. As for the stew, it was perfumed with the wine, cooked long enough that the bits of meat could be cut with a spoon, the whole thing topped with a few pearl onions and tiny carrots. I cautioned myself to go very slowly; this was too good to eat too quickly: the stew, the potatoes, the wine. It was, I began to realize, ridiculously old-fashioned, as was the decor. There was a shelf which went around the room on three sides. One part had ladies' straw hats, the one above me men's top hats, and the long wall against which the large party was seated was a hat miscellany which included a pilot's helmet and a diver's rig.

The two English-speaking guys were presented with a cheese plate and a new bottle of white wine, which they insisted on sharing with the hosts. Madame politely took a bit in a glass and they talked for a while. Finally, the American said something in French which ended with the word "mistress," and Madame straightened up, grabbed her glass and stalked from the room. I could see her, though, as she staggered up to the bar, finally able to let loose the laughter she hadn't wanted to let go in the dining room. She was laughing and gasping for air so loudly that the American wondered if she were okay. She eventually got herself under control, walked back in the room with a few tears still leaking out of her eyes, said something concise, and everyone laughed some more.

Even with the uptight bourgeoisie splayed against the back wall, I felt right at home in this place, which was inexplicable because I wasn't really interacting with anyone. But there was nonetheless a feeling of being guests, not customers, and it was a groove that was easy to fall into. Before long, though, I was finished, and being uncertain of the eventual bite, I declined dessert or cheese. Monsieur presented the bill, a whopping €44.40 -- 14 more than I'd wanted to spend, and just about half the money in my pocket.

I knew I was returning to extreme financial uncertainty, the possibility that I'd be completely out of money when I got back to Berlin. I knew I didn't have any work ahead of me, and only one magazine owed me money and was so overdue that I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see it. I had no ideas what bills would have come in the mail while I was gone. I suspected I'd have a letter from my landlord waiting -- he hadn't heard from me since December, after all -- and as it turned out I was right.

But none of that mattered right at that moment. I'd had one of the best meals of my life, in surroundings that were eccentric and redolent of an age that's definitely past. I'd felt at ease and happy to be alive. That's what I'd paid for, and you can't put a price tag on it.

Monsieur had opened the front door and was standing outside on the sidewalk. What, I asked him, was that potato thing? "Gallette Lyonnaise," he answered. "Potatoes, onions, bacon. You put it on the plate to look like a cake, which is why the 'gallette.'" "And the potatoes make it Lyonnaise," I said. "Exactly." The air was cool and bracing. "You are at a hotel?" he said, pointing down the hill. "The hotel," I said, pointing up the hill. "Ah, rue Lafayette," he decided. I didn't disabuse him. He extended his hand. "Well, my friend, thank you very much. Come again." I told him I would and he went back inside. I started the climb to the firetrap I was going to call home for the night.

* * *

Post script: In writing this, I pulled out my bill for the first time since I'd paid it. Weirdly, it looks like the wine, at 19.80, was the most expensive thing on the ticket, since I remember the terrine at 7.80 and the Bourgignon at 16.80. Clever trick, although I can't prove anything because Monsieur's handwriting is totally unreadable. And this Frommer's review confirms that this wasn't just a lucky find -- if nothing else, the award from the French tourism folks confirms that there may be some calculation in what I saw. Still, the chef's credentials from places like the Cordon Bleu were genuine, and showed. It was a great way to end the trip.

Restaurant de la Grille, 80 rue du Faubourg Poissoniere, 75010 Paris. Reservations: 47 70 89 73

Eat, Think, Gossip

While I was in the States in October, I was lucky enough to acquire a copy of this book, The United States of Arugula by David Kamp, which I'd been wanting to read for some time. Foodie-ism, if I may be forgiven the term, is an interesting cultural phenomenon, and hardly restricted to the United States, although the degree of it there and the swiftness with which it arrived can be unnerving. Furthermore, this book ties in with a couple of others which have been getting a lot of discussion recently, most notably Bill Buford's Heat, and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, , the former of which I've read, the latter not. I did, however, read Pollan's great article on "nutritionism" on Sunday, and suddenly a bunch of stuff came together in my head. Now let me see if I can disentangle it.

Kamp's story begins with pioneers like James Beard, Julia Child, and Craig Claiborne, each of whom had an individual way of awakening postwar Americans towards the possibilities of what they put on their tables. Beard's approach was that of the hearty bon-vivant, a man's man who wasn't afraid to mess it up in the kitchen to produce good-tasting, all-American food, and who was particularly adept at that manliest of all pursuits, outdoor cooking -- although he could also whip out a mean loaf of bread. Child and Claiborne, on the other hand, were lucky enough to come onto the scene just as America's Francophilia was initiated by Jacqueline Kennedy's love of French food and put into high gear by the restaurant at the French Pavillion of the 1964-65 World's Fair on Flushing Meadows on Long Island. Child had taken cooking lessons in Paris while her husband was employed there and came back to the States determined to turn Americans onto this amazing cuisine. Claiborne, for his part, was reviewing restaurants for the New York Times and got to watch the phenomenon grow, eventually hooking up with one of the chefs who'd worked at the Fair, Pierre Franey, to make the Times' food section the template for all other American newspapers'.

But the story really becomes important when the idea of eating well leaves the expensive restaurants and democratizes by merging -- in California, of course -- the impulse for fine cooking with the search for perfect ingredients, which latter was an inevitable product of the hippie-driven natural foods movement. The central figure for this was -- and, really, still is -- Alice Waters of Berkeley's Chez Panisse restaurant, and the early chaos of that revolutionary place is a story which meets Kamp's skills head-on. The intrigue, the musical beds, the drug use, and above all the titanic egos on display are perfect fodder for his Vanity Fair sensibility. Still, he never loses sight of the Big Picture, which was that ultimately this was a very, very successful movement, one which soon expanded past the California borders and into other states, and also expanded past the restaurant business into producers like Celestial Seasonings and Ben & Jerry's and -- especially -- into the grocery business through America's Whole Foods chain (which started in a building near my house in Austin which is now a laundromat).

The book's momentum is such that you're just swept away by the stories, and the skillful way Kamp joins them all together. The Food Network! Iron Chef! The Zagat Survey! Mark Miller! Tony Bourdain! It really is a great read. Except...

Except three really important figures in my own telling of this story are missing, two entirely, and one mentioned in passing for something I don't consider his most important contribution to the story. And, in a really, really backhanded way, this also reflects on Pollan's essay. Let me take these three missing persons in roughly chronological order.

First is Edna Lewis. who died last February at the age of 90. Mrs. Lewis was, unlike anyone else I can find in Kamp's book, black, and she learned how to cook the traditional way from the traditional sources. Untraditionally, however, she left for New York at the age of 16, and, after a short time as a domestic, became known as a cook. She ruthlessly pursued that career, doing private catering work and finally taking over the kitchen at Barney Josephson's Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, a hangout for all manner of lefties and jazz fans. She worked in several other restaurants, gave cooking lessons, and kept up her catering business, and in 1972, put out her first cookbook, The Edna Lewis Cookbook. Four years later came The Taste of Country Cooking, which made her reputation. I finally caught up with her (in a manner of speaking) in the late '80s, when she was brought in as executive chef to help rescue Brooklyn's fabled Gage & Tollner steakhouse. I remember going there with a group which included two German friends who loved to cook, and on the way out, one of them bought one of her cookbooks -- one I already had -- at the cashier. "You won't be able to make any of that back home," I warned her. "I don't care," she said. "Anyone who takes this much care knows things I don't know, and they're things I can turn to my own uses. This is a very wise woman." And she nailed it.

Edna Lewis was fanatical about two things: paying attention and having the perfect ingredients. Observing what you were doing while you were doing it so that it became part of you was obviously something she'd picked up from her mentors. And having perfect ingredients, although it was considered eccentric when she first came into the public's notice, is now a sine qua non of any good cooking. It wasn't so much that Mrs. Lewis brought Southern cooking north, but that she brought what she considered Southern practice public. And yet, she is ignored in Kamp's book.

The second figure is Raymond Sokolov, mentioned in passing as the guy who replaced Craig Claiborne as the Times' restaurant reviewer. Which he was, at the beginning of his career. He also became, through his books and his column in, of all places, Natural History magazine, one of the first to make the point that there were a lot of native American ingredients and foodways which were vanishing thanks to Big Agriculture and the Interstate highway system. I'm not even sure his 1981 book, Fading Feast: A Compendium of Disappearing American Regional Foods is still in print. While writing other books, including a cook's apprentice narrative which pre-dated Buford's Heat by a couple of decades, The Saucier's Apprentice, which also serves as a practical guide to classic French sauces. But it was his sounding the klaxon about the "fading feast" which puts Sokolov in line for mention in this book, because people heard the alarm and responded to it, which has at least as much to do with the current greenmarket revival as Alice Waters and the guys in Union Square. (Due diligence: I worked under Sokolov during the years I was a cultural correspondent for the Wall Street Journal Europe, and had dinner with him once or twice, and although he can be a tough editor, I really like the guy).

The third missing figure here is one you can link to from the list over there on the side of the page: John Thorne. Thorne is far more of an outsider than the other two, but once again, I consider him important to the American food story for his doggedness in seeking out historical precedents and attempting to reproduce classic bygone dishes at a time when this was something very few were doing, as well as his non-gor-may attitude, and, most importantly, his ability to render that attitude and the reasoning leading up to it in absolutely crystal-clear prose. Thorne's never been in much of a position to deal with classic French cuisine, having spent his formative cooking years in rural Maine and, now, in Massachusetts, but his was the absolutely perfect recipe for cornmeal pancakes I cooked this past Sunday morning and when I heard he was investigating Louisiana Cajun and Creole cuisine for his book Serious Pig, I was happy to pass on to him all the knowledge -- and recipes -- I had. (He wound up quoting me). I'm happy to have noticed that, after a slight interruption, he seems to be publishing the Simple Cooking newsletter again, and you could do yourself no bigger favor if you like to cook -- and, just as importantly, if you want to read some of the best-written, best-thought-out writing on food and foodways -- than to send the Thornes money for a year's subscription.

What all three of these figures have in common is what breakaway cookbook author Eric Gower calls "mindfulness," a being-there-in-the-moment approach to the not-so-simple acts of cooking and eating. This kind of mindfulness is at the core of the approach Pollan is suggesting in his long essay -- and about as far away from the celebrity-driven honky-tonk of the second half of Kamp's book as you can get. It's also, I'm utterly convinced, at the heart of healthy, sane living, something I may not always achieve, but not for the lack of these exemplars' lessons. In short, I'm glad I read Kamp's book, for the scandal and for his attempt to structure a story which didn't seem to want to sit still. But I do think it's necessary to point out that that's not all there is to the story.