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BERLIN BITES Review Attila Hildmann Fast and furious vegan Berlin’s vegan bad boy cum celebrity cookbook author has started selling his meatless burgers on Kottbusser Tor’s fast food strip. By Walter Crasshole Michel Le Voguer It’s hard to know where to start with a place like Attila Hildmann. The fact that something new has set up shop in the never quiet yet seemingly financially cursed southern-most end of Kotti’s Adalbertstraße or that it’s a restaurant opened by the vegan chef known as controversial to your German friends. Yes, a vegan chef is controversial, even among Berliners. In 2017, tip named him its most embarrassing Berliner for taking the challenge to eat a steak if the journalists present at his tasting weren’t convinced of the superiority of his meatless burgers. When some preferred real meat, instead of eating the steak, he presented a live calf that the journalists were supposed to slaughter themselves (none of them decided to draw blood). That same year, the born and bred Berliner caused a scandal for banning the entire staff of Tagesspiegel newspaper after receiving negative press (he has since retracted that). And in March, he was arrested in Charlottenburg after a parking citation escalated with the police. Parking rules don’t seem to concern him much: in May his Porsche was spotted on the sidewalk underneath the Kreuzberg Zentrum, about 50 metres away from his burger joint. Everything about Attila seems like the stuff of fiction. This adopted Turkish child of very German parents (his middle name is Klaus-Peter) once studied physics at Freie Universität. It was watching the sudden death of his dad by heart-attack on a ski vacation in 2000 that put him on a different, meat-free trajectory. He slowly took on a vegan diet and doing sport, losing 35 kilos in the process. He published his first vegan cookbook in 2009 and an award-winning follow-up, Vegan for Fun, in 2011. But it was Hildmann’s tough-guy persona-meets-trendy diet promoter that catapulted him to YouTube and soon German TV stardom (including RTL show Let’s Dance), all the way stirring controversy, like with questionable comments about the refugee crisis in 2015 (something about “integration” and “self-mutilation of German values and culture”). That was about the time he launched his Attila matcha-tea! Michel Le Voguer But what’s not controversial? Organic vegan food in Kreuzberg – following up his Imbiss in Charlottenburg and ironically taking over the spot that was shortly before known as Chickenberg (and a thousand other businesses). The try-hard design of “Snackbar II” with “Vegan Food Porn” scrawled in fake graffiti outside isn’t exactly doing itself any favours (or drawing in the Instagram crowd) but who cares? Once drawn in, it’s easy to drop your concerns and call it a guilty pleasure. The staff are friendly young lads and ladies in black and the menu is the right amount of simple, with only eight burgers on offer, and of course sides like their perfectly crispy Bio Pommes (regular or sweet) and drinks. Most interesting is undoubtedly the Daisho burger (€6.90), a sushi-inspired concoction of fried eggplant, bean sprouts, pineapple, mushrooms, fresh coriander, wasabi mayo, Thai ketchup and a chickpea patty between two sushi rice-formed buns and some seaweed. We can’t deny: it was delicious. The right mix of sweet and savoury, it went down in mere minutes, but did leave us less than full. For a less fun but more filling option, we recommend the signature (vegan) cheeseburger (€6.50): with the dense chickpea patty standing alone with vegan cheese and the standard mustard/mayo/ketchup/lettuce/tomato combo, it’s the perfect cure for a hungover. The real winner though was as American as it comes: the chili cheese burger (mild or spicy; €7.50). Perfectly sloppy, the black beans, guacamole, mayo, cilantro, creamy melted cheese and chickpea patty on a standard bun actually wasn’t as sloppy as its stateside counterpart, but still left us totally satisfied. Here, the wait time can be described as negligible, perfect for guilt-free junk food on the fly that fills the stomach while not weighing on the soul. We’re not certain if the moderate number of customers is due to its aforementioned cursed location or that your German friends are staying away because of the man’s reputation. Either way, it’s hard to deny that fast and easy vegan food without pretense is hard to beat. Sober or sozzled, we’ll come back. n Adalbertstr. 7, Kreuzberg, Sun-Thu 12-22, Fri-Sat 12-23 42 <strong>EXB</strong>ERLINER 150 <strong>172</strong>
BERLIN BITES Review Tisk Warmed-over Soupe Pop quiz: You’ve got some fancy friends visiting and they want to eat “real Berlin food”. After the obligatory stops for döner and currywurst, and leaving aside tourist traps like Zur letzten Instanz, where do you take them? By Jane Silver Tisk, a “Berliner Speisekneipe”, seems to be the perfect answer. A sous-chef from Tim Raue’s La Soupe Populaire teams up with a dilettantish ex-Allianz agent turned TV cooking competition winner to serve twists on the foods they ate growing up in East and West Berlin respectively? The German press couldn’t contain itself. On our visit, Kristof Mulack (from TV) and Martin Müller (ex-Raue) were celebrating their Berliner Meisterköche nomination for “Best Scene Restaurant”. Which scene? We couldn’t exactly see clubbers from nearby Schwuz or Loophole sidling up to Tisk’s undulating bar and dropping €50-plus on dinner and drinks, let alone the Turkish or Bulgarian Roma residents of surrounding Rollbergkiez. German foodies and in-the-know visitors seemed more like it. We heard our American table-neighbours marvelling at the mayo on their fries. Those Pommes came with Tisk’s signature “broiler”, a whole roast chicken for two. Over the restaurant’s short existence, the price of the dish has gone from €18.50 to €24 to a rather untenable €35, which might still be worth it if you’re sick of the flabby-skinned factory-farmed specimens at most of this city’s Hühnerhäuser. Tisk’s bio-birds lived decadently in France before being shipped over, sous-vided and crisped up in the oven – to either moist perfection or unpalatable dryness, depending on the night and whom you ask. If you’re not a chicken fan, you’ll end up with an equally hit-and-miss selection of small plates. As at Soupe Populaire, there’s a take on Senfeier (€11); here, the mustard-coated egg was overcooked and could’ve used more acidity to counter the potato mash and caramelised cauliflower that came with it. Deep-fried sausage aka Jägerschnitzel (€6) failed to transcend its East German kiddie-food roots, while the “Jurkensalat” (yes, the menu’s in Berlinerisch; €6) went the fussy route, topping the cucumbers with a yoghurt-roe-jalapeño combination that didn’t gel. On the other hand, the asparagus “salad” (€9, really just four short white stalks with tarragon sauce and wild herbs) was some of the best-cooked Spargel we’ve had in this city and tasted of pure spring, and the rich decadence of the Blutwurst croquettes made it easy to forget their €2/mouthful price tag. Müller and Mulack have put their heart into this place, and deserve credit for attempting to sex up some of Europe’s unsexiest cuisine (as well as for the cocktails, which use local spirits like Mampe to creative effect). But ultimately, with the memory of Soupe Populaire’s playful dishes and unparalleled industrial setting relatively fresh, it’s hard to say Tisk stacks up. Bring the out-of-towners here if they insist – or steer them to nearby TwinPigs, a Chileanand Swedish-owned gastropub famous for its pulled-pork sandwiches that just debuted a new “Polish-Peruvian” menu. You know, real Berlin food. n Linus Kallin Neckarstr. 12, Neukölln, Tue-Sat 18-24 embody sexuality— live luscious Infoevening Berlin: June 21st Introductory Course Cologne: June 15th-17th + Berlin: June 22nd-24th Professional Training Intensive International engl./germ. Start July 22nd 4-Module Training germ. Start 2/1019 www.sexological-bodywork.institute www.sexologicalbodywork.ch PALMYRA MOUTHPIECE by Quote Unquote Collective (Canada) etb Plus stand-up comedy by Daniel Ryan-Spaulding and the premiere of Tribal Schmibal by the Berlin International Youth Theatre! June, 2018 by bertandnasi JUNE 2018 International Performing Arts Center ETBERLIN.DE 43
Page 1 and 2: Antisemitism Kippa scandal gone hay
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS EXBERLINER 172 - JUNE 2018
Page 5 and 6: POLITICS REPORTAGE ZEITGEIST ART MU
Page 7 and 8: BEST OF BERLIN— June 2018 BEST GU
Page 9 and 10: ANTISEMITISM Meanwhile, Islamophobi
Page 11 and 12: ANTISEMITISM Are you saying it has
Page 13 and 14: BERLINS ONLY OPEN AIR-CINEMA SHOWIN
Page 15 and 16: SPOTLIGHT Schöneberg turf wars Sch
Page 17 and 18: CRIME Snapshot IVANA from the block
Page 19 and 20: CRIME CRIME Alex’s expansive trai
Page 21 and 22: WHAT’S ON — Exhibitions 9 decad
Page 23 and 24: WHAT’S ON — Film Reviews Starts
Page 25 and 26: WHAT’S ON — Film Previews 19),
Page 27 and 28: WHAT’S ON — Music Verbatim Hann
Page 29 and 30: WHAT’S ON — Music Preview Berli
Page 31 and 32: WHAT’S ON — Stage “How shall
Page 33 and 34: of deliberate creativity? The poiso
Page 35 and 36: WHAT’S ON — Art Highlight Hello
Page 37 and 38: WHAT’S ON — Art Reviews James T
Page 39 and 40: WHAT’S ON — Calendar THU 14 Ani
Page 41 and 42: ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide Fr
Page 43: COLUMN— The Gay Berliner The gayv
Page 47 and 48: ADVERTISING — The Language School
Page 49: U S B A U —G R O P I U S B A U

EXB 172

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