db Community Service #44: Mexican Food Stores in Berlin

At this precise moment my system is completely devoid of donuts and strong, black coffee.  The bad news is that this blog post will contain no satire, comedic rants or bullshit.  It will, however, contain a review of actual cool shit and 0% faggy poetry as per usual.

If you are from a region where a large part of your diet is Mexican food (like California, or maybe Mexico, but there they just call it 'food'), and you are somehow stuck in a region where the spiciest dish on offer is a hot dog with ketchup and a pinch of curry powder, you will no doubt crave spicy food.  Sure, you can be a chump and buy Chio salsa (90% ketchup) and 8 scrawny tortillas made in Belgium for around 8 EUR for the both of them.

Once you've made that mistake, you will then proceed to make the same mistake with all the other overpriced fake Mexican brands on offer.  Then dump a ton of money hitting all of Berlin's 'Mexican' restaurants and leave feeling like all the expat bulletin board posts you've read recommending the places were really written by the restaurants' owners (they are, btw).

Enter Mitte Meer and Pfefferhaus.  Look no further.  I have pesonally tasted and tested these places (though not everything for sale at these stores, that's impossible) and I can therefore give it the db Seal of Approval.  Mitte Meer has a few branches in Berlin; a new one recently opened in P'berg just up the road from me (though it could be in Pankow proper, as I live in the top part of P'berg away from most of the yuppie douchebags).  There you can find in abundance:  real tortilla chips (2 kinds), tortillas (2 sizes), jalapenos, red jalapenos, red salsas, green salsas, picante sauces, refried beans, refried black beans, chorizos of many varieties, and many, many other foods from countries which don't live on kebabs and currywurst.  The best part is the price:  a huge pack of 18 small tortillas = 2 EUR, a large sized tortilla 18 pack = 3.75.  They even give you discounts for buying in volume (30, 40, 50 EUR, etc.).

RED HOT SAUCES FOR RED HOT PEOPLE

I'm not sure if it is called Das Pfefferhaus or Die Pfefferhaus, but they do ONLY hot sauces, hotter sauces and ring stinger sauces.  That place is no joke.  They've even got brands of hot sauce called "100% Pain" and "Colon Cleaner."  I haven't tried those, mainly because I'm not a frat boy and I would like to keep some living nerve endings on my tongue and in my colon (just in case).  When you walk into the shop (located directly beneath the Alexanderplatz S-bahn tracks on the Alexa side) you will be greeted by the only living German who likes spice.  I say this because A) I love sweeping generalizations, B) Herr Mann opened up a can of hot sauce whoopass on me.  We sampled several types of sauces from a wide variety of regions:  Caribbean, Floridian, Texan, Mexican, Calfiornian and even some evil shit from Tennessee that was called something like Evil Shit From Tennessee.  As I kept sampling, we anted up on the spice scale with each tasting.  By the time we got to the Habanero line, I was coughing and requesting a sip of water, while he was saying that the next hottest one was his favorite.  Though in retrospect, I didn't see him taste the spicier ones.  He may have been a currywurst sucker in disguise.

Suffice it to say, these two places have enough !ay carumba! to keep your tongue flapping while you fall into Johnny Cash's infamous burning Ring of Fire.

Pfefferhaus: http://www.pfefferhaus.de/index.php?page=index
Mitte Meer: http://www.mitte-meer.de/