Eat like a local in Berlin

Maybe Berlin's oldest restaurant still serving local dishes is an option, prices are moderate:
https://zurletzteninstanz.com/en/menu/

If you want to be more with locals you need to get off Alexanderplatz (Alex) a little bit. In my neighborhood you will find a restaurant which is modern, serves classic dishes and does not have an English menu online: https://www.speisehaus-berlin.de/speisekarte/

One in between and easy to reach by two stations with S-Bahn is Nolle. Also English menu but hey that's the way it is. http://www.restaurant-nolle.de/en/karte/secialties

At Nikolaiviertel near Alex you will find some more places serving German kitchen. Also Brauhaus Lemke am Alex is an option.

Do you mean local food ie, regional German cusine or where the locals tend to congregate? Both are not the same. People the world over tend to eat at restaurants that serve cuisine that they wouldn't necessarily eat at home, for example going to an Italian restaurant, or an Indian, Thai, Mexican and so on. So Berliners aren't all eating at restaurants serving traditional German cuisine.

If you want to eat at a good restaurant serving German cuisine it isn't necessarily going to be frequented by locals, usually it'll be tourists but that doesn't mean that it isn't going to be good. Personally I'm a bit ambivalent towards German cuisine. Having Polish heritage I've grown up with saurkraut, potatoes in all their forms, sausages of all sorts, rye bread etc so whilst I enjoy the flavours it can be a bit dull after a while so when I've been in Berlin I've sought out restaurants that have offered something a bit more interesting. I have eaten in a couple of restaurants serving traditional german food, they were populated mainly with Germans but I have no way of determining whether they were local or tourists however I don't recall the names of them as I was underwhelmed by them. Likewise the restaurants that were better were also populated primarily by Germans but who knows if they were local or not.

My best suggestion is to go on your gut instinct. If you see a restuarant that serves German food and you like the look of it then go for it. Don't worry about the patronage, you won't know who's local and who's not and it's certainly not an indicator of whether the food is good or not. Wendy's, Applebee's and Chuck E, Cheese are all popular but it doesn't mean they're any good.

so to clarify, we would like to go to a restaurant that is not touristy. Where would locals go to get a good meal

For "not touristy" you need to get away from Alex. I mentioned two. As mentioned a good indicator is a website without English and a place without English menu.

thanks I will check out your recommendations

True...don't go to a place where you'll be given or asked if you want an English menu.

There are Berlin cuisine restaurants farther east from Alexanderplatz, say in the Jannowitzbrücke area or in Köpenick, right across from the famous Köpenick Rathaus. (You'll need to go with the S-Bahn). The Rathaus serves meals too but pricier.

Nikolaiviertel is good if you can get in as the restaurants there are pretty crowded.

There is an old Berlin restaurant some 10 mins or a bit more from Alexanderplatz, reputedly the oldest or one of the very oldest in Berlin. I'll have check the notes for the exact name, was there twice. Both times were enjoyable, satisfactory.

Well, what I was asking was for your original idea, not the rich stereotypical restaurant. We are not looking for that in Berlin or the many times I have been to Hawaii

Hi,

This isn't exactly what you asked about relative to location. Instead of being at Alexanderplatz, you'll need to go to Berlin Köpenick (S-Bahn 3 eastwards) to get to this restaurant where locals eat. I've been there 3 times, one of which was dinner...no foreign tourists to be seen at all.

The establishment is: "Restauration Zur Gardestube" at Rosenstraße 3, ie, opposite of Rathaus Köpenick on a small side street, Rosenstraße.

The cuisine is made up of Berliner Spezialitäten, eg, Berliner Eisbein, and you can order the famous Berlin beer, "Berliner Weisse mit rot" . Not at all pricey, decent prices, this place blows the myth that one can't get good German or Berlin cuisine in Berlin. In both the western and eastern parts of the city, those restaurants are there.

Berlin has a reasonably large Turkish population. What are some of the better Turkish restaurants in Berlin serving really good Turkish food? Not just ordinary Doner Kebab and dips that you can find probably anywhere in Germany.

I think it is a bit old school to avoid restaurants that offer menus in English and an English website. If you are in a city that has lots of tourists as well as conventions and international companies, this is just good business sense to offer this. It has nothing to do with a place being too touristy or not a place where the residents want to eat. I can't remember the last time I was in a restaurant in Frankfurt that didn't offer an English menu except for the Turkish place 2 blocks from my apt. They have photos though and numbers.

Go to any residential neighborhood that surrounds the city center and you will find good restaurants. Ask the person helping you in the store, ask your tour guide, ask your front desk clerk where they like to go eat.

In Berlin we have places where you cannot place an order in German - and that is really nerving some of us , even the younger creative ones who speak nearly only English in their daily business. In Berlin there is a difference between locals and Berliners. We have many locals speaking English only and with their culture they have their own taste, finding and founding their own places. Take Aunt Benny or House of Small Wonders - good food but not typical German and nothing what Germans eat on a regular base. Especially around the start-up companies and areas you will find offers like this. And yes, language on menus is a filter. For sure not the only one but an effective one. A good example for where locals go but they have English menus is Giraffe Berlin but that is not close to Alex, even by S-Bahn 20 minutes.

The same discussion is when you look into Turkish restaurants. If you ask Germans where to find a good Turkish rstaurants you will get a different answer than asking the Turkish people here - by the way 3rd or 4th generation living here and having (also) German IDs. So, if you ask old school pal Ilkin you will get different answer from him than from me. And also the Turkish people from Wedding will give different advice than the Kreuzberg or Neukölln ones - also they are not one closed group.

If you ask me for a good Turkish restaurant I would send you to Osmanya. Really some kind of travel into a different world.

If you are open for Egyptian sytle I would recommend one of my personal favorites: Marooush. This is where some Arabic people go to living in Berlin.

I would never compare Berlin and Frankfurt, lived and worked in that area for years. Frankfurt is different because much smaller and due to airport very much international business. More than 50% of people living in Frankfurt do not have German roots (source). In close cities such as Mainz and espsecially Wiesbaden it is already different. Darmstadt is also very special and more like Frankfurt in international mix (due to business). Frankfurt is also an untypical city in terms of favorite alcoholic drink: It is the only city which prefers Ebbelwoi (wine like) instead of beer, funnywise Germany's largest beer group has its HQ in Frankfurt.

Quite accurate about not being able to place your order in a restaurant in German in Berlin. A German woman mid-60s told me last summer of such an experience she had in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in eastern Berlin where the young waitress didn't speak German and the woman herself could not communicate in English and English was the only language this Chinese waitress spoke..

One of my criteria is to check the posted menu; if it's in anything other than the local language I adjust my expectations.

One of my criteria is to check the posted menu; if it's in anything other than the local language I adjust my expectations.

Why? A menu with an English translation is not a sign of poor quality. I've eaten in some excellent places that have had an English translation on the menu. Two examples from my recent trip to Prague, U Modré kachničky where the head chef previously cooked for the Kings of Sweden and Norway (you don't get to cook for royalty if you're no good) and where the food was very traditional and very good yet the menu was available in English (both in the restaurant and online) and Lokál, a restaurant very popular with locals which serves excellent Czech food and has an English translation on the menu.

Hmmm... this thread took an interesting turn.

Places I'm hoping to hit during the annual May visit to Berlin:

• Fred's recommendation in Köpenick!
• sla019's recommendation in a prior thread: Joseph Roth Diele
• MarkK's recommendation on another thread: Restaurant Volkskammer (or maybe I'll go with one of his recs on this thread!)

Places I've enjoyed in the past:

• Spätzleexpress (Swabian food) -- recommended by a Berlin musician who was one of my German tutors
• Il Pastificio -- Sardinian, not German! I ate in their old 6 or 7 table restaurant -- tried to eat at the new place last May but it was closed due to one of the owners being admitted to the hospital.
• Momos -- vegetarian dumplings -- go with a friend and get the 24-dumpling platter -- sit out front and people watch as you try to guess which dumpling you are about to eat

It all depends on how one looks at a menu in a given restaurant. In Paris I have been in Chinese restaurants where the menu pages appeared in Chinese, obviously, then the French pages are included as well as separate pages in English., ie a tri-lingual menu. Most likely, the most practical solution. The same in Berlin, German, English, and Chinese, all adjacent to each other.

Then there are restaurants I've seen in France and Germany where upon entering I'm asked if I want a German or English menu, seeing that I have tourist written all over me. At least, I am asked, to which I tell them "German." Likewise in France too.

Then there are restaurants offering menus in various languages which you see by the flag colors...Japanese, Russian, the Union Jack, Italian, Chinese, etc.

Then in eastern Germany where it takes places almost exclusively, minus any exceptions, are small/medium restaurants in small towns totally not visited by anglophones or international tourists, save a few Russians when I saw them, if at all, where the menu is only in German, the guests are only German, that's what you see and hear....just as in yesteryear when I saw that.

When I enter one of these places, that German menu is what is brought to the table. ..period. You can bet that's all they have too.

@ Dave...On the language issue the menu at "Restauration Gardestube." on Rosenstraße, a few minutes from the entrance to Schloss Köpenick, has English next to the German names of the dishes offered, ie bi-lingual menu.

On this last trip in May 2018, walking back and forth, I went back to the Schloss area (not the Schloss itself) on two separate days, eating twice at " Gardestube" never saw a foreign tourist in the vicinity. The only tourists I saw were Germans sitting, having lunch outside of the nearby Rathaus restaurant, in the immediate area, and in the shops. No English spoken or heard...perfect.

Had I seen foreign tourists or visitors, I would have been surprised.

"Gardestube" as a small restaurant is a take-off from C. Zuckmayer's play, "Der Hauptmann von Köpenick." and the incident in Köpenick in 1906, when this suburb was not part of Groß-Berlin. like Spandau. You'll see that in the old style decor, ie at the turn of the century, in the eating room and artifacts up on the wall around the eating room

This other eating place I've not tried, couldn't get in because of the dinner crowds, it was packed, locals and tourists. That was plain to see. Its location is not as far out as Köpenick but close to Alexanderplatz or Nikolaiviertel, maybe the outlying part, don't know exactly. I just walked back to Alexanderplatz to get the S-Bahn back to Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse.

It's called,"Mutter Hoppe" on Rathausstraße, located at the corner. It's another place serving typical Berliner cuisine along with the famous beer, "Berliner Weisse" On two separate occasions Germans recommended this place to me...if only I could get in without waiting.

@creesepv - When I've wanted to try a restaurant that has a menu in another language, I've used Google Translate app to look at the menu. You hold your phone with the app pulled up in "camera mode" and it will translate it for you. It's a bit cumbersome but a great way to see what the items are on the menu! And, I've found that pointing to the menu item with the waiter works great as well as knowing please & thank you in their language. Good luck!

If you want authentic Berlin food all you need to do is wander around in one of the local neighborhoods and look for a small "stuhbe"/bar with a menu posted outside. Take the S Bahn a few stops, get out and wander around. If there are a few folks inside having a beer and a meal, that's your place. Don't overthink it. Order Eisbein or a schnitzel or whatever looks good. Odds are it will be cooked to perfection and delicious... If you really get lucky you might be able to get herring and potato's with linseed oil...that's about as local as you can find and more and more difficult to get...it's old folks "soul" food.
If you've done it before, don't have a weisser...that's a children's or a one and done summer drink. See what everyone else is drinking and have one of those, probably a pils.. to fit into Berlin you need to immerse in Berlin and the way to do that is to keep it real simple.
It's 100% OK to have a Schaschlik from a street cart for a snack or for lunch...that's a typical Berliner kind of thing to do.

"Why? A menu with an English translation is not a sign of poor quality."

That's not what I said. I said I adjust my expectations. In my experience I find the menus usually a bit more limited, pricing different, and service often to a different standard. Likewise the clientele tends to be different. Not specifically better or worse, but the the difference between a Gasthaus inside the walls of Rothenberg odT and one in Steinach Ens is markedly different. One is local, the other, not so much.

We were delighted to finally notice this restaurant in the same block, near Wittenberg Platz, where we usually stay. It’s called Restaurant Berlinchen and they don’t have a website but you can google them and look at their images.

"...wander around in one of the local neighborhoods and look for "Stube/bar" with a menu outside. Take the S-Bahn a few stops...." How very true. You'll find Berliner Eisbein, the Berliner Weisse beer and other typical examples of the cuisine and drink to order.

Go out to Pankow, Köpenick (such a local restaurant is across the street from the Köpenick S-Bahn station), Karlshorst or Warschauer Str., Jannowitz Brücke station area or Moabit.

Just as info: Berliner Weisse is for very most people a seasonal drink for late spring and summer, especially warm evenings or Sunday afternoons. Of course you can drink it whole year through but best experience is at this season. We have that seasonal or regional tasting with some European food products, e.g. eat Danish yoghurt only at sea shore regions with nature-salted air :-)

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I support the "drive out of center" recommendation. There you can find the "local hero" and the "instance for ..." restaraurants.

Just to name two examples at very western Heerstrasse:

Il Porto is a local hero of Angerburger Allee since 40 years. The people of that very special aged neighborhood go to that Italian restaurant which has a German and and an Italian menu. Very local and not cheap - and no tourist guarantee (until today).

Tiroler Bauernstuben: Close but more an instance for Alpine and Austrian cuisine - locals drive also long distances to eat there. Always one of the first picks from a lot of Berliners (seldomly locals) when it comes to that cuisine.

These two egenral types of restaurants you will find in each mid-outer neighborhood, e.g. around Rathaus Steglitz, Alt-Tegel (have a look at Wirtshaus zum Alten Fritz), Waidmannslust, Rudow, Grunewald, Mariendorf, Wannsee, Alt-Köpenick, Weissensee, and so on.

Whatever you all do in Berlin - just enjoy it.