American Style Pizza in Berlin

Gentrification got you down?

Greedy, weasely landlords throwing you out in favor of the uberhip?

Grab a fat slice of American style pizza!

 

We need the comfort food.  The taste of home that you can't quite get anywhere else:  pizza be thy name.  Everyone in Europe seems to hold the thin, bland, soulless Italian pizza in the highest regard and use it as the litmus test.  Then they go and fuck it up even further by putting corn, ruccola, potatoes and all manner of godawful shit on it.

Sure, thin, crispy pizza with a flavorless tomato stain and 10 strands of cheese might appeal to those with peasant taste and the appetite of a little girl, but when we Yankee Doodles haul out the pizza, we try to kill ourselves by exploding our guts.  We order XL pizzas and a 12 pack of beer, pass out on the couch and wake up and eat the cold remainders for breakfast.  And drink the remaining beer as well.

American pizza is not just thick crust; it's like a fluffy pastry which is crisp on the bottom and chewy in the middle.  It has so much cheese and toppings on it that you can't see the sauce or crust under it.  The sauce is rich, thick and flavorful.  And we make the pizzas in at least 4 sizes.  Boo-yow.

I FOUND THE PLACE:  Manhattan Pizza on Monumentenstr. 26 (xberg near Viktoriapark).  The Chicago Pizza is The One.  It is so good I think about it all the time.  It is perfection served out of a tiny hole in the wall on a back street.  And it comes in 5 sizes.  The small pizza is thick enough to choke a donkey.

Don't be fooled by the names:  it won't be like a New York style pizza or a Chicago pie.  But it's about everything else they throw on that makes it right:  the aforementioned perfect crust, the rich, zesty sauce and the piles of cheese and toppings that will make your Yankee flagpole rise.  I'm drooling as I write this.  I won't mention my flagpole.

The one called Chicago has salami, onions, ham, bacon and extra cheese.  Go there in the middle of the day and you will have the whole place to yourself.  They are mainly a delivery business, but damn is it a good pizza.  I didn't believe it, so I went back 4 times.  Then I ordered the second largest one they had (45cm), ate half of it there, then took the rest all the way home on the bus, pissing off everyone with the smell.

Then, gentle reader, I ate it cold that night for a late night snack.  Then I reheated the last piece for breakfast.  Yes, I am a fat bastard.  But a happy one.

Manhattan Pizza:  Monumentenstr. 26, Berlin-Kreuzberg. Closed Mondays.

Nazi Freedom in Berlin

Stepping Out for Donuts, Running Into a Wall of Cops

MAY 1, 2010, 15:00    It is now the fourth hour of the lockdown. I cannot leave my own street in Prenzlauer Berg because a bunch of fucking bonehead Nazis have the freedom to march in our fine, leafy, breeder-ridden streets. And the cops protect them. And all of this in a country where Nazism is technically illegal. Apparently there’s a bureaucratic form for everything, even illegal activities. Just sign the appropriate forms and you can waste police money and time for any asinine belief system you follow. Sure, they can’t wear the swastika. Nope, they can’t do the ‘zieg heil.’ But what the hell does it all mean when they can just wear black and obtain permission to walk the streets anyway? It’s as if a group of child rapists got to walk down the street freely and proudly. As long as the cops don’t see any child rape t-shirts on them and they don’t rape a child directly in front of them, alles gut. Same logic, different lowlife.

I saw there was nothing to eat in my flat and naturally I thought of going out to grab myself a fistful of lard-and-fake-fruit-sugar ecstasy as any Dunkin’ Berliner would do. So I stepped out to find a fence at the end of my street with a wall of cops in riot gear behind it. They weren’t letting anyone through—unless they were on their way home and they showed the cops their id with their address on it. We waited. I snapped pics of cops in various bored poses. At least I was able to take their pictures without having my skull tenderized by batons. Try taking a picture of a cop in America and see if you don’t wake up in the hospital with your camera up your ass.

 

We waited some more. We walked up and down the streets and saw that we were blocked in from all exit points. A friend of mine called me to see if I was going to Kreuzberg for the Annual May First Anarchy March and Yuppie Vehicle Roast.  I said I couldn’t go as I was locked down. My friend asked what I was going to do and all I could think of was raiding the police vans in search of stray donuts. There MUST be a box of Berliners in one of those riot vans.

 

I finally managed to obtain a Snickers Bar and a bottle of Sternburg beer from the only shop open within the police blockade. They had no real food and definitely no donuts, so I grabbed the bottle and the candy and walked down the street trying to blend in with all the other helpless victims of Nazi atrocity. One old drunk was babbling like a village idiot to each and every passerby. At one point he even took his drunken diatribe to the police line. They just laughed at him and rolled their eyes. The cops had special pockets in their riot vests for their juice drinks and apfel schorle. How cute. The drunk? Only a bottle of Sternburg*, no special pockets. No wonder he was ridiculed.

*This Dunkin’ Berliner blog post was brought to you by Sternburg Export Bier aus Leipzig. Discriminating Berliners who know strong, cheap beer choose Sternburg Export. Mmmm, Sternburg….. not just for drunken punks anymore.

Photos copyright Dunkin' Berliner