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:

"How about a big dietary change?", or the one about your demons' diet, two wolves inside us and switching to a ketogenic diet

After talking about going beyond fear and learning how your fears enjoy their tea, it's time to talk about your demons and their diet.
In a very serendipitous way, I stumbled upon the following pic, that is apparently creating a decent following on Twitter and on Pinterest:

["Do not just slay your demons, dissect them 

and find what they've been feeding on"

A little bit extreme, but hey!, it's kind of a mixed bag]

Slaying and dissecting someone, even just some demon, is not appealing to me, and yet the part of the sentence about what the demons have been feeding on struck a chord with me. It reminded me a lot of the Two Wolves story, mostly attributed to the Cherokee tradition, nowadays quoted all over the place:

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!

Halo Top Creamery brought seven dairy free and vegan ice cream flavors to all lucky foodies in the US - Waiting for the European edition!

Are you the kind of person that enjoys ice cream only when it is more or less sunny and hot outside or are a couple of pints of this frozen delicacy a very welcome habitué in your fridge?

Even while embracing minimalism and frugality, I really love ice cream and, once in a while, I am willing to splurge on an excellent vegan ice cream that is worth my money.

If you, like me, can appreciate good quality ice cream, I have some good and some bad news for you.

The good news:

Halo Top Creamery, founded in 2012 by Justin Woolverton in California, is a company that produces ice cream flavors that are low-calorie, high-protein, low-carb, low-fat, and low-sugar. Which is pretty cool per se.

Lately, they did even better, though, because two weeks ago they brought to the market their "delicious flavors without the dairy": seven new flavors that are vegan, dairy free, soy free, GMOs free, trans fat free and made with coconut milk.

The flavors are:

Why decluttering one's life, one day at the time, could be the most important thing you will ever do - Part 2. Minimalist living - How this shapes my life every day (#5.-6.)

In the previous post of this Minimalism series, I explained how long-term shopping, meaningful spending, decluttering and downsizing add value to my life, one day at the time.
Here you can find two further elements that define what minimalist living is for me:

#5. Eating nurturing food of good quality on a daily basis. 
Whole foods, paleo diet, low carb, high carb, ketogenic diet, traditional cuisine, halal, kosher, your grandmother's recipes book...

The mileage may vary depending on someone's age, physical and health conditions, geographical area, blood type, religious or spiritual belief system.
In my opinion, every person should go for food that helps them to feel happy, fit and able to deal with their activities and with their lives in the best way possible. What works for someone could not work for someone else.

[Saisonal, fresh and tasty ingredients, 

perfect for a yummy salad bowl

Image credit: ISO Republic]

To me, this means:

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.

"What would have Marie Antoinette notoriously not said, instead of "Let them eat cake", in a gluten-free world?", or the one about how it feels to live with celiac disease

How would your life look like without pizza, without pasta, without bread?
Can you imagine that?

And can you imagine a life without cookies, cakes, muffins, cupcakes, brownies and amaretti, donuts, biscuits, waffles, croissants, baklava, strudel?

Without grissini, tacos, burritos, food in breadcrumbs, bruschetta, piadine, churros, crackers, baguettes, and pies?

Without licorice, chocolate bars, ice cream and ice cream cones, French fries and potato chips, biscuits and crisps, savory snacks and crunchy cereals?

Without rolls, wraps, sandwiches, toasts, panini, sweet buns?

Without bulgur, soba noodles, couscous, chapati bread, focaccia, calzoni, and soja sauce?

Pastry of any kind, anyone?

Can you? Would you? Should you?

[Kirsten Dunst as the Queen Marie Antoinette

in Sofia Coppola's underrated biopic 
released in 2006.

It is very unlikely that the French Queen 
ever said "Let them eat cake". 

Still, what would have people misattributed 
to her in a gluten-free world? 

"Let them eat Cañihua and caramel scented popped Amaranth"!? ]

It would look like the life that, just until one generation ago, most people affected by the celiac disease were forced to live.

Not because going gluten-free was the ultimate hipster hype, not because some celebrity said that gluten is evil, not because they wanted to lose weight, but just because they had no choice.

Why decluttering one's life, one day at the time, could be the most important thing you will ever do - Part 2. Minimalist living - How this shapes my life every day (#1.-4.)

Coco Chanel, featured in 1999 in TIME magazine's "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century", is still one of the most well known and most quoted fashion designers to have ever lived, and doesn't need any kind of introduction.

Madame was all about quality over quantity, and she was used to saying: "Once you've dressed, and before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take at least one thing off". She knew that, way more often than we'd like to think, less is more.

["Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance",

or said in another way: quality over quantity matters]

Just like the timeless style created by the woman that invented the little black dress and chose the future Chanel No.5 among different perfume samples presented to her, minimalist living is not a fortuitous occurrence.

Embracing a minimalist living means being bold enough to take the path less traveled and smart enough to make the right decisions and to adjust your trajectory on the way, every time that you need to.

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.

What a slice of cake has to do with bad questions and purple boxes and how you can keep your emotional freedom, no matter what

I am sure that you are like me and that you like to think that people are good, that they have good intentions, that most of the time misunderstandings get in the way and if someone offended you, they didn't mean it badly.
Like Jeph Jacques says:

You ought to expect better of people. It encourages you to be a better person yourself. 

And yet there are those people.

[Simply adorable and yummy Purple picnic treats 
for a birthday party. And yet... 
a lot of gluten in it, unfortunately

Image credit: Juniper Fancy]

The ones that keep asking me year after year when I will spend my holidays in Italy even if I keep saying year after year that I am up for discovering new places I have never been to before...

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.

Singleness made in Berlin - #1. Or the weirdest question I got asked so far

Being a single woman in Berlin can be fun, weird, scary, interesting, adventurous, weird, challenging, surprising, peculiar, weird, sexy, pleasant, different.

Did I already say that singleness in Berlin can be weird!?

You must be willing to love so much to get your heart broken, be the underdog in a fight to get a fat lip, and in life, willing to go over the edge. The ones that play it safe, in life or in business, will rarely see the other side. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Charles Smith

[The best t-shirt about singleness

Please drop me a line if you find it in Purple!]

And it can be overwhelming too, both in good and bad ways.

Choosing my own purple dawn, or how to start anew once again, even if the new year has already started

How are you living your life? Which habits do you have? 

Are you doing what you are doing because you want to, or just because you think that you don't have other chances? That you don't have a choice?

Just because you are scared or afraid? Of what? (if this is not too personal, of course)

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain 

[pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910]

Tough questions, right?

Something that most people are afraid to ask themselves, if not strictly necessary. If they are not forced to. It is often easier to avoid such questions, at least in the short run.

And yet, they are indeed very important ones, for finding purpose in life and achieving what each of us is striving for. 

Five things I love about Berlin in the fall

As you already know, if you are a regular reader of this blog, I am deeply in love with Berlin.
And if this should be your first time here, welcome! My name is Azzurra and I am deeply in love with Berlin.

I consider the city amazing in every season, and yet in each season for different reasons. 

[Vegan hot chocolate: 

a  perfect treat prepared with cocoa, sugar, and...

either soy milk, or rice milk or almond milk or... just hot water]

Five things I love about Berlin in the fall:

#1. Vegan hot chocolate available almost everywhere, most of the times with Vegan cream as well;

#2. The colors of the trees and the leaves in parks and gardens;

#3. Walking on the streets and seeing the light reflecting on the buildings and seeing how it changes depending on what time is it;

What you can eat while going vegan and gluten-free - Chapter One - Chocolate

As you may (or may not) know, I went Vegan five years ago, I have celiac disease and since 2010 I am in an on-off relationship with raw food, while being on a 70-80% raw food diet most of the time these days. 

Because of it, and because of another couple of things, one of the questions people ask me the most - together with "Where are you from?", but this is another story, stay tuned for it - is "What do you eat?".

Since yesterday I told you that I consider a good strategy eating chocolate while feeling down, I decided to write a little about this topic in the next weeks.

Chocolate is a sweet beginning, don't you think?

In the coming posts, I will let you know which options you have regarding chocolate while living vegan and gluten-free, but we can already say that a good percentage of bitter chocolate kinds are vegan and gluten-free anyway, even if not every kind of bitter chocolate is vegan, though.

Slices of farinata, flirting in another language and grammatical uncertainty, or being happy to living as an expat while missing 7 things about Italy

Being an expat is not always easy, but it also not a nightmare.

It all depends on you, on your attitude, on your openness, on your willingness to adapt, to learn, to change your mind if necessary, to discover and try new things, to see the world with other eyes.

Personally, I am very happy, as an expat, and I regret nothing.

Or maybe is my only regret that I didn't leave Italy way earlier than I did.

But this would be another story, so stay tuned for another blog post about that.

People ask me often how I did what I did.

How I learned German that fast.

How I survived abroad alone.

How I kept living in Berlin even if it was very hard and heartbreaking sometimes.

And usually, they are very disappointed by my answer. Even if my answer is always 100% sincere.

But there are no magic potions, no unicorns, no Sugar Plum Fairy in it.

[Ready for my answer? No Sugar Plum Fairy here

Well, apart from Elizabeth Murphy for Pacific Northwest Ballet

Photo by Lindsay Thomas, Courtesy PNB]

The naked truth is...

Discovering Sushezi, a Sushi maker that simplifies preparing Sushi at home for Maki-lovers

As you already know, I rave about delicious Vegan Sushi and Vegan Frushi...

I could eat it every day. And yes, I enjoy it so much, that I write Sushi with a capital letter...

[Easy-to-follow instructions of Sushezi

Image source: Sushezi.Com]

Unfortunately Sushi and Frushi can be either expensive, or time-consuming, or they can mess your kitchen up. I know a couple of places in Berlin where eating Sushi is less expensive than usual, but eating Sushi every day? It's tempting, but not healthy, at least financially speaking.

That's why this week I was so happy to discover the Sushi maker Sushezi, produced in New Zealand since 2007. Why I am discovering it only now?!

But I am digressing from this interesting Sushi maker...

Its motto is "Perfect sushi made easy" and looking at the pics preparing Sushi at home looks really easy and "dummies-proof". And the rolls are perfectly formed, regular and neat.

[Sushezi instructions - Steps #1. to #5.]

According to the instructions for using Sushezi & preparing sushi rice tips (downloadable in PDF format on the official website and included in the package) it's possible to use the Sushi maker for preparing Maki at home in 10 easy steps, with fillings of your choice. 

In my case, it would be slices of avocadoes, cucumbers, celeries, carrots, bean sprouts, tofu, bananas, strawberries, apples...

What about you? 

[Sushezi instructions - Steps #6. to #10.]

Sushezi website has a simple, elegant and user-friendly layout and includes five common sections: 

1. Home 
2. Instructions 
3. Other uses 
4. Where to buy 
5. Contact us

Unfortunately "Where to buy" is currently listing only stores located in New Zealand, but there are international distributors for Argentina, Australia, France, Israel, North America, Republic of South Africa, Singapore, Spain, Ukraine and United Kingdom. And I have also seen Sushezi on Amazon and eBay.

The website is announcing the forthcoming publication of its first Sushezi recipe book and meanwhile it suggests other uses for Sushezi: Ginger-nut Log, Lolly Cake Roll, Chocolate salami, Walnut fudge rooll, Basic biscuits...

But I think I am going to focus on Vegan Sushi and Frushi. After all I have to catch up years without eating enough of it...

Did you already know Sushezi? (and if yes, why didn't you tell me?!)

Or do you have another Sushi-making procedure? Let me know in the comments!

Previous post:

Waiting for home-made Vegan Frushi...

Tags: Sushi maker, Frushi, Sushi, Vegan, Maki, Sushezi

Are you tired of museums and clubs but you still want to enjoy Berlin? Try out these 10 places instead

People sometimes ask me which my favorite places in Berlin are.

This seems to be a very easy and innocent question, but it isn't.

It's difficult to only give one answer since one of the things that I love most about Berlin is that it is unruhig, unsettled. 

Streets and places change fast, restaurants open and close fast, clubs shine and die fast. Shops renovate and move fast to a new district. Trends come and go fast. 

Everything changes, the city changes, people change. And yet the atmosphere is quite the same.

By walking on the streets, you get the impression that the city is living fast and that everything is possible. Not only for the city itself but also for you. Being part of it is magical.

[The Turkish bath in the Schokofabrik

Image source: Hamam at the Schokoladenfabrik]

I decided to list ten of my favorite places in Berlin anyway, but since on the internet you can already find plenty of tips about museums, cool sights, theaters, art exhibitions, and clubs, this is another kind of list. The numbers do not represent a ranking, however.

If the world would be divided into good and bad people... on which side would you like to be?

After reading my post about the art installation "Before I Die", one visitor of the blog asked me yesterday what I would love to leave behind me when I will be gone. What I would love to achieve. What I would love to be remembered for.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

Woody Allen

[Woody Allen and Mia Farrow 

during the shooting of "The Purple Rose of Cairo"]

What do I want to achieve? I had to think about that, but after a while, the answer was somehow easy and natural to me.