Berlin, April 26, 2010

Berlin Mitte continues to hustle and bustle with new eateries continually appearing on each block. A new one that has arrived since my last visit in February surprised me. For as long as we have been in the Gendarmenmarkt neighborhood, more than eleven years now, a rather plain and dispirited restaurant/ice cream/pastry establishment, the Cafe Moehring, held the southwest corner of Jaegerstrasse and Charlottenstrasse. It was a faded third cousin of the rich old, pre-calorie counting palaces like the dear, departed Rumplemeyer’s at Seventh and Central Park South, where mounds of whipped cream seemingly dolloped onto everything in sight were proudly served with the cocky old attitude of damn-the-abstemious. At last the dingy milieu has departed this Mitte corner. But what has opened in its place?

Retrogression, plain and simple. The new restaurant/Gasthaus is enormous, a virtual cavern of several thousand square feet. Inside are smaller and larger tables, no tablecloths, each shining surface beaming raw and unfinished – or more precisely sanded - to a velvety consistency that begs you to stain it if you can. There is a large mahogany bar and there are old pictures. The female servers are in modified dirndl (allure through frumpiness). Only the stuffed stag heads on the wall are missing. Large banners of small blue and white checks, the symbol of the sovereign superiority of Bavaria,* billow over the walls.

The door proclaims that you have entered the establishment of “Augustiner Brau Muenchen, founded 1328.” The menu proclaims that you can have all the Thuringian bratwurst, fatty chops, sauerkraut, roast potatoes and red cabbage in vinegar, all soaking in a thick brown sauce, you can eat, all to be washed down with all the light and dark Bavarian beer you can drink. Until recently one has had to look hard to find real German cooking in Berlin, among the welter of sushi, Thai and Vietnamese offerings, not to mention international same-ole, slimmed down Eurofood. Here we have an establishment telling you that after 6 p.m. you can have the real stuff, “Edelstoff,” from wooden barrels. Turns out that’s just more beer only higher proof. It was late Monday evening, but the sparse crowd was having the usual mellow good time – not an expression of carb-guilt in sight.

One wonders where we are. Europe was progressing smoothly to a seamless economic and cultural union, and diversity was giving way to a pleasant blend of European niceness. Suddenly, the Greeks can’t pay their bills, and a bunch of Berliners are feasting on 1950’s food and beer from a fourteenth century recipe. Where will it all end?

* I don't think it's true that Eddy Arnold's hit song of the late '40's, "Make the World Go Away," was commissioned by Bavarians.