How to eat your way through three days

I am cutting teeth. One would hope at my age that such glories as pushing new bits of dentyne and nerves and enamel through sensitive gums would be a thing of the years past, but no. My wisdom teeth are making their presence known. It hurts. it feels like I am chewing on a mouthful of gravel sized glass. In what I can only assume is some sort of reaction to it, I have also taken to grinding my teeth/clenching my jaw in my sleep. When I wake in the morning, I have to literally pry apart my upper and lower jaw with the use of my hands. Needless to say, I am somewhat unhappy with the whole situation.

Anyway. Enough about that. This past weekend was graced with a visitor so therefore I spent more time concentrating on eating and drinking than I did on my teeth. Tamaryn was in town. She arrived on Friday morning and we spent the morning taking in a whirlwind tour of the city. It went something like this:
Checkpoint Charlie
Course of wall
Holocaust memorial
Brandenburg tor
check, check, check, check.
Can we start eating yet?

Our first food stop was to eat some currywurst. Berlin is famous for inventing the snack, credited to a Charlottenburg woman called Herta Heuwer sometime after WW2, using the ketchup and curry powder she acquired from British soldiers to dress the plain old pork sausage up in new, post war garb. I tried currywurst a few weeks ago from a place called ‘Konnopke’, arguably Berlins most famous currywurst stand and was UNDERWHELMED. nothing about it was good for me. it wasn’t inedible... but it wasn’t good either. The sausage was rubbery, the curry was nonexistent, the ketchup was an unnatural coloured, watered down mess usually found at Wimpy restaurants. Currywurst, I decided, was a tradition the germans could keep for themselves. However, I read about this place called Wittys. Wittys is an imbiss stand (a sort of snack hut) on the northwest corner of Wittenbergplatz. Its specialty is, of course, currywurst. I heard that the chips were the best in the city, the wurst delicious. But it was something else that piqued my interest. Everything was organic. So I thought, if I was going to foray back into the wurst thicket, I would do so with organic intent.
After our whirlwind sightseeing tour, we hit the imbiss stand. And on my days. OH MY DAYS. It was so delicious I almost wept. The chips were thick cut and golden, crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside, the sausage was soft, flavorful and spicy, the tomato sauce was deep red – clearly made of real tomatoes. Having eaten Wittys currywurst, I do believe I understand why Germany sells 800 million servings of it a year.

After our delicious lunch (that I won’t lie to you, we flat hand shoveled into our mouths) we headed across the street to KaDeWe, up to its heavenly 6th floor food hall. KaDeWe (Europe’s biggest department store) is, if I am well behaved, where I am going to go when I die. Picture miles and miles of marble counters, champagne bars, sushi, pretzels, fresh pasta, oysters, bird of paradise coloured exotic fruit, whole counters dedicated solely to eggs, wraparound counters of cheese, cheese islands even, the smell of baking bread, chocolates, truffles and cured meat. One of my favourite things to do is to drink champagne in lavish food halls. I love everything about it. The man sitting next to you polishing off a 120eur bottle of rose champagne alone, the ladies what lunch with their white china tureens of steaming soup, their diamonds glinting in the store lights, the smell of Chanel as you walk past. I love the sound of cracking lobster claws a few counters along, the tempting call of the cheese counter from the next room, and knowledge that if you take two lefts and then a right you will end up at the canapé counter where the swan shaped profiteroles swim idly by on silver trays. Food halls are my heaven. KaDeWe might have surpassed Paris’ Galeries Lafayette as my favourite.

Other food highlights from the weekend include but are not limited to:
Afternoon tea and cake (or champagne and apple tart) at Opernpalais on Unter den Linden
Peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes from Cupcake
Long and lazy Sunday brunch that included hearty portions of stuffed deep fried artichoke hearts
Raclette from Winterfeldt Markt (the most delicious and extraordinary food market)
Sweet, crunchy pears the size of rugby balls
Cheese, figs and pretzels before going out
A drunken 3am hunt for falafel that ended in a drunken 3am molestation of burgers, chips and sugary soft drinks. Seriously. How can something so bad be SO GOOD?

So Tam has gone back to London and I am tired, kind of bloated and, to be honest, strangely hungry. I am doing my utmost to hold off for few more days until I venture back to Wittys. But I’m not sure just how long I can hold out.