Chinese Hot Pot: DIY Grub

In some of the more Westernized Asian restaurants, a single chef and/or his team will prepare your food right in front of you.  Often they will fling food and swing blades in the air and make Kung Fu sounds while your shrimp does a swan dive into its oily grave.  Others will chop suey your meat and veggies with all the pomp and circumstance of the Cirque du Soleil.  Generally all of this is overpriced shit for yuppie scum who value the illusion of personal servitude.

Enter: A Berlin-Charlottenburg Restaurant with Chinese Hot Pot, or the Ikea of the Asian restaurant world.  You see, they make you assemble and cook your food yourself.  Genius.  They bring you a gas powered pot divided into two swampy-looking sections of bubbling soup.  Then they bring you piles of raw meat:  fish, shrimp, beef, chicken, pork, mystery meat and more mystery meat.  You are then expected to chuck it into the boiling brine and fish it out with a wire scoop. Don’t get me wrong, I like new cultural experiences, brave new cuisine choices and anything that is not fast food.  That said, I am the single pickiest eater I have ever met.  I hate almost everything that people consider normal, so when I saw the mound of meat next to the two sections of bubbling stew—one white, one brownish red—I had to fight the inner redneck in me which wanted to shout ‘FUCK THIS SWAMP WATER!!! BRING ME SOME FRIED YAK DICK!!!’

So I went with the old standard hot and sour chicken (sadly, they were fresh out of the fried yak dick), which was very similar to the breaded and fried chicken mix with veggies and sauce that you would get in any Chinese restaurant in America.  I’m a culinary chicken, yes, but I got to watch my dining comrades who had ordered the Asian Ikea Meal trying to figure out what the hell to do with the little elbow wrench and the slabs of particle board.  I watched them poke at the mystery meats, dunk, boil, scoop and eventually eat them.  I was comfortably ensconced in my safety net of Plate #22 with rice and a beer, watching with amusement as everyone else was reading the instructions with their meal.   In this case the instructions took the form of the friendly waitress, who was warning people to cook the food at least 5 minutes or else you would—according to her pantomime—make a strange face and rub your torso from the chest down to the pelvis.

One of the Czechs at the table was commenting on the authenticity of the meal, saying to the waitress that he had visited Shanghai, Shaolin and Shoop Shoop (Do Wop). After receiving the approval of our waitress, he pointed out to me that the menu was so authentic that they even had one menu item scrawled in pen in Chinese characters at the bottom of the bill of fare.

“Um, do you think,” I ventured a question, “that the dish written only in Chinese is Sweet and Sour DOG?”

 

Great Asian Food: No Yuppies

I don't usually review food which doesn't consist of deep fried bread dough and lard stuffed with jelly filling, but bear with me:  I've found two great Asian restaurants to get your Chow Fu on in P'berg.  The first is a Real Thai Restaurant called 'Tofu,' and the other is a Chinese restaurant called 'Wok Show.'  I will tell you more about these two places if you promise me up front that you have read the terms and conditions and check the box which says  'I have read the terms and conditions so lay it on me, fool' below this blog.  Those terms:

1) Forgive their silly names.  These are deliberately designed to keep the Yuppie Scum out.  Coupled with their hole-in-the-wall appearances, both of these restaurants strive to do only good food and no neon buddhas and shit.

2) If you go there, don't get drunk beforehand like some Limey hooligans out for a post piss up curry.  If you are a 'Merican redneck, under no circumstances should you push the soup away and bellow "FUCK THIS SWAMP WATER!!! BRING ME SOME FRIED YAK DICK!!!"

3)  If you are any way, shape or form a Yuppie, meaning 'materialistic individuals with no souls and high paying jobs out to ride on the coat tails of other people's experiences and raise their neighborhood rents for good measure,' Stay. The fuck. Away.  

If you agree to these reasonable terms, please get ready to have some fantastic food.

I discovered Wok Show by reading some expat comment forum listing cheap eats in Berlin.  An individual by the name of Sum Dum Fuk said you can get a massive plate of pot stickers (Chinese dumplings) for 5 EUR.  I believe the individual was Asian and I trust him implicitly. I have always hated Chinese fast food because it consists of watery, salty sauce on crunchy, barely cooked vegetables.  This is why I tend to order pot stickers or those wacky Chinese pancakes with the mixed filling and plum sauce (called 'Mu Shi,' and oh how the Germans chuckle when I order that one).  Anything out of the ordinary, other than the usual sheise you normally get in Euro/Asian dumps.  I will cut to the chase now:  bring friends and get yourselves 3 plates of 20 dumplings with various fillings.  The nice lady who is always there will automatically bring you chop sticks, even if you look as white and dorky and clueless as myself.  I recommend putting some dumplings in the small bowl in front of you, soaking it in soy sauce and trying to pick those bad dogs out with those sticks.  After you've dropped a few on the table, feel free to bow and apologize and order knives and forks.  The kind staff will stop laughing at you, turn off the Chinese Candid Camera and bring you the cutlery of your choice. Guten apetit!

'Tofu' Thai restaurant was recommended to me by a Czech friend who has been living in Germany for 20 years.  Normally I wouldn't trust the culinary advice of anyone whose culture cooks with ketchup as a rule.  But since Milan spent many years traveling to and from Asia and he said the place has the proper portrait of the Thai king on the wall and the staff answers you if and when you speak Thai to them.....it's the shizzle.

I know nothing of Thai food because what I've had so far hasn't impressed me.  Cutting to the chase once again, get any of the red or green curry dishes.  Or anything.  I chose the dish with the highest number of chili pepper icons, which was only two. I had a dish last night called something like 'Gak Tung Burn' which was so spicy that I'm still tasting it when I cough. BRILLIANT.  I LOVE spice and find it all but impossible to find spicy food  in Central Europe because Central Europeans are a bunch of fuckin' pussies.  No flavor other the die sauer kraut.

'Tofu' is not a hippy joint in spite of its unfortunate name.  It is a hole in the wall--as is 'Wok Show,' but I have found that the very best food is ALWAYS found in the tiniest, most run down holes you can imagine.  You see, without all the neon buddhas, silk dresses and gold tea cups, they can concentrate on making delicious food while keeping the yuppie hordes out.

Tofu - Erich-Weinert-Straße 1, Prenzlauer Berg

Wok Show - Greifenhagener Str. 3, Prenzlauer Berg