Exotic and interesting restaurants to try out in Berlin - South America & Latin America

Feeling hungry and looking for a cozy and special place for a yummy dinner?
Among your New Year's resolutions, there was one about reducing your takeaway madness and you are opting for a real restaurant, for a change?

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (2008), has a couple of tips in store for you:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Don't eat anything that arrived via the window of your car.
If your grandma couldn't pronounce it, it's not food.

[Yep, it's that simple.

Not that surprising and yet so refreshing, right?]

Simple advice, and yet not always easy to live by, apparently. For most people.
Still, after your new favorite restaurants with Asian and African dishes, here you have a list of cool places to try out in Berlin if tonight you are curious about recipes and culinary traditions from South America:

Lunchbreak at Dussmann #1. Books in display - Unicorns, flamingos, mermaids or llamas?

In Blake Edwards' classic movie adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, the socialite Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn, the one and only) explains to her puzzled and amused neighbor Paul Varjak (George Peppard, also gorgeous) what to do when you have the mean reds, that could be probably described as a sort of panic attack or anxiety attack:

Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

[Nobody was able to rock the little black dress like this lady:

Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly,

dressed by Hubert de Givenchy, with Edith Head's supervision]

I like to think that, mean reds aside, we all have our own personal version of Tiffany's.
A kind of magic place where you can switch mood in a matter of seconds and feel safe, in peace and full of hope that, no matter what, everything is going to be alright, eventually. Every single time.

I am so lucky that I even have twice magic places: Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Dussmann.

The mindset you need, when you are a polarizer, and a very special kind of smile that can make your day

Sometimes, being who you are, being authentic, feels risky.

It can feel like being exposed, too vulnerable, even like an open target... or a little bit naked.

Hiding could seem the perfect solution for that, and yet I had to experience, day in and day out, that pushing even harder and being, even more, yourself and showing it to the world is the only solution that will make you happy in the long run.

You have been given a gift. Please stop squandering it.

Naomi Dunford, Click, Clack, Moo: Why You MUST Stop Dumbing Yourself Down

You are different, you say?

Congratulations, honey. Welcome to the club. It's time to start enjoying your superpowers.

On Wednesday, it happened to me three times. 

And I smiled every single one. (Ahoi Wednes-yay for that!)

How? You may ask.

Let's take a step back.

[Let's take a step back, 

with my gorgeous purple flat ballerinas

made in Italy (RIP, lovely shoes)]

I am a polarizer, ladies and gents.

Which means that I am used to the good, the bad and the ugly of being at the center of attention wherever I go, whatever I do.

While going around in summer with short dresses and flip-flops or flat ballerinas, I am used to the fact that the vast majority of people of any age would behave in one of these ways:

Short and sweet motivational questions for your self-care #5. The famous blue ones

"Yes. But how about the blue ones!?"

Not long ago, while attending to a networking event in the Netherlands, I found myself talking to someone that used to live in Berlin for a short amount of time and defining her eager to recall her "German" past would be a big understatement. The woman was smiling and burning of interest, looking forward to her answer about the blue ones.

Blue ones what, you may ask?

We were actually talking about the yellow ones... The yellow ones are the private buses that you take as a tourist, in order to visit Berlin by bus and have a look around within a couple of hours or so, thanks to a specific sightseeing itinerary that covers most of the mainstream attractions of the city.

[The blue ones...

Are what vintage postcards are made of]

And the blue ones, you may ask?

Hips don't lie, beards do. And people do it as well, sometimes - Part II

The young, blond man is sitting near me in the subway, at the end of a chilled & sunny summer day.

He's tall and he is hot and he's wearing glasses and... I surprise myself at doing it again.

While sitting absolutely motionless and apparently distracted near him and looking somewhere else in front of me, I am actually undressing him on my mind. 

Yes, exactly. I am imagining him without his huge hipster beard and, virtually, undressing his beautiful face and asking myself if he would be even more handsome without a beard.

["Rire dans sa barbe", a popular French idiomatic expression

not directly translatable into English,

as depicted by Auckland-based designer Anjana Iyer...

with a huge hipster beard, of course]

Gut feeling about that? Hell, yes.

Sorry for not being sorry about that.

As we said in the first part of this post, beards are not really my thing.

Typically "Berlin style" is... #3. The hipsters war about tattoos

Berlin, just like London and probably New York, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv and a couple of other places in the whole world, is one of those big cities where you don't really pay attention to tattooed people, at least not until you meet heavily tattooed ones, since a good percentage of young people display some kind of (often very bad) tattoos.

Usually, the Rihanna type of tattoos or some newbie / hipster tattoo. The cheaper, the better. Old school and new school tattoos made by friends from friends that are just learning how to tattoo exactly now? Here we are!

And, at least in Berlin, it is fascinating to observe what happens, from a human dynamics point of view, as soon as young hipsters, that go around barely covered even in winter, in order to show their tattoos to everyone at any time, stumble upon someone with more or better tattoos than them.

[Flip flops and naked feet while walking around?

To be honest, I never thought that I would do that again,

and yet here we are, because...

never say never]

It is definitely more fascinating than watching Discovery Channel.

And I am not kidding.

Typically "Berlin style" is... #2. - Two modern Marina and Ulay

Many of you liked a lot the katana lady, as an example of the very special atmosphere one can experience in Berlin.

Another example of what's typically "Berlin style"?

Last Sunday while walking in Kreuzberg, after a big storm, I stumbled upon two young street performers, dressed up like for a very formal wedding with 35 degrees Celsius and people in t-shirts around them sweating for the big heat.
The young "couple" was busy fighting and running and dancing and laughing together, while interacting with each other thanks to a huge grey mattress, in a fascinating art performance about love and other disasters that reminded me of the notorious  'Relation in Space'.

[The naked truth about love, relationships, pain,

broken hearts, emotional struggles and so on...

Relation in Space (1975)

by Marina Abramović & Ulay]

As if this would be the most normal thing to accidentally see, on a lazy Sunday afternoon. And in Berlin, it is. 

This one is for Michael.

(To be continued)

Tags: Berlin, Berlin's quirky sides, Performance art

What to read next:
Typically "Berlin style" is... #1. - The katana lady 

Visiting the blog for the first time? Aloha!
Where to start, if you are new 

"What are your KPIs for a good bar?", or five questions I get asked a lot on a daily basis and five questions (almost) nobody asks

Do you know a good bar? They ask.

And I go "Well, it depends. What's a good bar, for you?".

And they go "Where we can find good cocktails".

Ah, if just everything in life would be that simple.

A clear question, clear parameters, a clear answer follows, KPIs are fulfilled. Happy ending.

[A good bar? The one with good cocktails, they say.

My favorite one? Café Morgenrot's Heilige Welt:

Alcohol-free and incredibly sweeeeeet

Image credit: Bustle]

Still, I smile going home, while realizing that I get asked this question almost every single day, even if don't drink alcohol at all. And yet, to most people, I probably look like the kind of gal that goes for shots every single night. (Hint, I never did... but may the force of stereotypes be with you, young Skywalker)

So here you have the five questions I get asked the most, day in and day out, in no particular order:

#1. Do you know a good bar? ("Yes, I do") - (Did I get asked yesterday? Check)

#2. Do you have a cigarette? ("Nope, sorry. I don't smoke" - And nobody believes me) (Did I get asked yesterday? Check)

#3. Where can I find some drugs? ("No idea, sorry" - The same as above)

#4. Where are you from? ("What do you need this information for, right now?" - Puzzled looks follow) (Did I get asked yesterday? Check)

#5. Are your tattoos real? ("Yep, they are") (Did I get asked yesterday? Check)

4/5 within 24 hours is a good ratio, if you ask me.
And here you have five question I almost never get asked and I would love to help people with, in no particular order:

Typically "Berlin style" is... #1. - The katana lady

Berlin is a crazy, unique and very interesting city.
Its atmosphere is quirky and relaxed at the same time, its streets are ugly and beautiful at the same time, its inhabitants are a nightmare to date and a dream to stumble upon.

Typically "Berlin style" is for example...

...Taking a walk on the streets of East Berlin on a Tuesday in the early afternoon and seeing a petite quiet woman carrying a gift-wrapped katana with absolutely nonchalant cuteness, as if it would be the most trivial activity in the world.

[Karen Fukuhara as Katana 

in David Ayer's Suicide Squad (USA 2016),

or maybe just the woman I met yesterday in Berlin]

(To be continued)

Tags: Berlin, Berlin's quirky sides

What to read next:
Singleness made in Berlin - #2. Or how to recognize if you spent too many years flirting in German

Visiting the blog for the first time? Aloha!

Where to start, if you are new

Vegetarian and vegan-friendly Chinese restaurants to try out in Berlin, for the perfect mix of tradition and fusion cuisine

Even if I don't go to Chinese restaurants that often these days, Chinese food has a very special place in my heart, since Chinese restaurants have been among the first 'exotic' ones to conquer Italian food landscape, back in the Eighties and Nineties.

Therefore, Chinese food was for me the very first experience with exotic food, as a child, and overall with something officially recognized and highlighted as totally "different": new unheard recipes, lots of beautiful and poetic names, mysterious ingredients and so much fun with the chopsticks...

[My first encounter with Chinese culture as a child...

Lots of fun with chopsticks 

and John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (USA 1986)]

Fun with the chopsticks and cinematic stereotypes aside, Chinese cuisine is overall yummy, incredibly diverse and eclectic and, last but not least, (usually) healthy and well-balanced. So, without no further ado...

Here you can find a list of Chinese restaurants to try out in Berlin. Feel free to drop me a line to suggest new ones! 

Korean restaurants to try out in Berlin, if you are curious to experience something new

Can you name at least one popular Korean dish?

In Berlin, Korean food has been the next big thing for the last six to seven years and Korean restaurant of any kind keep popping up on a regular basis in every Bezirk, while happily taking care of Berliners' love for Korean food and new shiny trendy cooking trends.

Korean restaurants are strong on burgers, table-grill & barbecue dishes and, of course, everything prepared while using kimchi and similar salted and fermented vegetables.

[Korean Barbecue Tofu Bowls

a tasty vegetarian re-invention of a traditional Korean dish

Pic & recipe by ohmyveggies]

Most side dishes are vegan or can be adjusted to be consumed as a vegan option and in the best restaurants, it is also possible to find very competent staff, able to offer gluten-free options.

Here you can find a list of Korean restaurants to try out in Berlin.

If your favorite one is still missing in this list, be sure to let me know, and enjoy!

How saying "Thank you" and "I am sorry" and "I apologize" and "You are welcome" every single day for the last two years changed my life - The famous "Karma tour" - Part 1.

"Well, you know. This whole karma thing of yours is amazing and such and I am very proud of you, of course, but for now, I can just be happy if you say that you have changed and I believe that you mean it. In one year from now, we can both see if this change is going to be for real". 

Old dogs don't learn new tricks, they say.

Oh well, sometimes they are right. But it depends on the dog.

What if that dog would be you?

Are you the kind of person that keeps saying like a broken record "I am like I am" or other amenities of the same kind?

Or are you the type of person that thinks to be able to change and to become the person you want to be?

If you belong to the second type of people, feel free to keep reading. I could have a story for you.

Which kind of story, you ask?

The story of how saying "Thank you" and "I am sorry" and "I apologize" and "You are welcome" every single day for the last two years of my life, no matter what, just changed everything, for me and for the people around me.

[Choose where you want to go, 
and then go all in for that.

One tiny little step at the time

Pics: Me, November 2017 
at Berlin's street art museum

Urban Nation © Radoslaw Kosiada]

Nope, it is not some kind of cheesy Hallmark production. It is real life. My own one.

From clean eating recipes to green smoothies, from ketogenic diet to stuffed panini, gluten-free friendly places to try out in Berlin

Are you feeling like having a piece of cake and yet you want to try out gluten-free desserts?

In Berlin for a weekend and curious about special places normal tourists usually didn't visit?

How about something healthy and delicious and a little bit bigger than life?

[When millennial pink is not only a stunning color, 

but also something super-tasty to try out:

Healthy Raw Red Velvet Fudge

(no bake, sugar free, low carb, gluten-free)

©Desserts with Benefits]

As promised here, a short and sweet list of gluten-free friendly places to try out (and to fall in love with) in Berlin:

Bowls and clean eating

The Bowl

Warschauer Str. 33, 10243 Berlin

Located in Friedrichshain near the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn stations, in the same building where you can find vegan supermarket Veganz and vegan shoes store Avesu, offers a fresh and seasonal menu dedicated to clean eating, with lots of vegan and gluten-free options.

The questions every (good) consultant should ask her clients, Feat. Berlin's coolest product management Meetup group & Albert Einstein

Do you know the difference between "Narrow A.I." and "General A.I." already?

And why it could be important to distinguish between puppy dogs and muffins?

And what's the biggest problem for A.I. and M.L. gurus willing to pitch their products to possible clients?

[Here you have a thorny A.I. image recognition problem.

Are they puppy dogs or muffins?

None of the above, ladies and gentlemen...

They are puppy dogs cupcakes!]

If you are a product manager or a project manager and you are living in Berlin or visiting one of the most interesting European capitals of the start-up scene, there is one great Meetup group you should definitely check out.

"Happiness is made of..." The happiness inventory that should become your new reality check tool, perfect for good as well as for bad days

As I promised in this post about why keeping a gratitude journal can have a big impact on your life, today I am sharing with you my own "happiness inventory", a very special list I have been putting together in the last two years while counting my blessings and the small and big things in life I am genuinely thankful for.

On the bad days, it is something useful to read, and expanding it on the good days it is a blast.
In my opinion, there is no better reality check tool than this, when I sometimes forget how wonderful and meaningful life can be. And how lucky I am.

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.

John Foster Dulles [1888-1959]

[Happiness is made of...

having blue hair and feeling great about it

Pic: Me, August 2016 © Radoslaw Kosiada]

I hope it will inspire you to create your own inventory and to expand it every day with new experiences and treasured moments.

Happiness is made of...

The gratefulness habit that can have a huge influence on your life and takes only ten minutes a day

"It’s not easy to go where you’ve never been".

The sentence is apparently very plain and easy to understand, and yet reading it while taking care of a translation task somehow forced me to think about life, love, happiness, success, safety, and satisfaction.

How can you be happy, if you have never felt happy before and you don't know how happiness does look like?

How can you recognize love and trust, if you have no idea how they work?

How can you look for safety and success, when they are just a blurred idea in your mind?

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

 Douglas Adams [1952-2001]

There is no magic wand that can do the job for you, unfortunately.

However, you have many options available and in my experience, one of the most powerful ones is being grateful.

Vegetarian and vegan-friendly Vietnamese restaurants to try out in Berlin, a good option for eating out even while suffering from celiac disease

Vietnamese cuisine is a feast for the eyes and thanks to the freshness of its ingredients, the big variety of flavors, and the great abundance of places to try out in the city, it is very popular and well represented in Berlin.

A good yin-yang balance of the meals is pivotal in the Vietnamese tradition and, thanks to the influence of the Buddhist cuisine, it offers a huge selection of vegetables, herbs, and spices and therefore it is usually a very good option for eating out also while following a vegetarian or vegan diet.

[Vegan Vietnamese summer rolls with spicy peanut sauce

Image source: Home Sweet Jones]

Things are changing fast in Berlin, and nowadays it is not only easy to find a vegetarian and/or vegan version of most recipes in every Vietnamese restaurant, but it is also becoming more and more mainstream for some Vietnamese restaurants to offer a menu that is completely vegetarian or vegan, it doesn't matter if we are talking about soups, wraps, rolls, main dishes or desserts. While living here, I had many chances to try new places.

The blog post that showcases the word "annoying" an annoyingly high amount of times, while talking about voyeurism, Schadenfreude and other very annoying stuff

Someone talking on the phone at the movies.

Someone trying to skip the queue and pass over people politely waiting for their turn.

Someone being rude as a customer at a restaurant or on a plane.

Someone letting their children run and scream where other people are sleeping.

Someone sitting next to you with poor personal hygiene on a hot day.

If I would ask you to name one situation that, in your humble opinion, has to be considered among the most annoying situations at all, I am pretty sure that you would be able to give me a good example very fast.

[The Worst of the Worst,

Expedia's 2015 classical infographic 

about the most annoying airplane co-passengers and their habits]

Most people tend to consider something in their life annoying.

Exotic and interesting restaurants to try out in Berlin - Africa

In one of my favorite movies, When Harry Met Sally..., there's a now ubiquitous, zillion-times-spoofed and ridiculously famous scene in a restaurant that practically everyone in the Western countries older than 15 knows even if they didn't manage to watch the movie so far.

(Guys, come on! Go watch the movie, it is a very good one and you will not regret it!)

It is usually enough to say "the When Harry Met Sally.... restaurant scene" and every person in the room knows what you are referring to, even if in the movies Harry and Sally actually go out and have dinner a lot of times.

[Yep, and nope: 

Yes, this is a restaurant scene from When Harry Met Sally... 

but no, this is not that restaurant scene]

And yet, besides the scene in Katz's Deli from Lower East Side in New York where Sally fakes an orgasm for making a point...

Exotic and interesting restaurants to try out in Berlin - Asia (Indian, Japanese, Israeli, Korean, Vietnamese food... and more)

Sushi is the new black.

It is enough to think about any dating scene from movies where the soon-to-become-couple or never-to-become-couple is enjoying some quality time together at a very trendy and if possible exclusive Japanese restaurant and you get the picture.

Funny enough, according to new stats published in the US, eating sushi on a first date can actually boost the chance of going on a second date with someone.

[Sushi is the new black... 

and it is also the new unicorn thing:

Rainbow unicorn sushi by The Indigo Kitchen]

And yet, even if sushi is so popular these days, there is so much more to discover about Asian food than just that and in a big city like Berlin it is very easy to try out new recipes, so here you can find a list of interesting restaurant to check out and to try out during a date, it doesn't matter if it is the first or the tenth one with someone you really like.