I spent the last weekend of October in Berlin with one of my very best friends Tabitha. We had so much fun! She's my oldest Brighton based friend and I actually met her and my dude Nick at the same time, shitty jobs can apparently bring great things into your life. We're both kinda busy and don't get to hang out often enough so a weekend break was the perfect way to squeeze in a whole lot of silly friend time. We both adore Berlin, this was my fourth visit and her sixth or seventh and it was super fun showing each other our favourite parts of the city. A joint favourite and a place we knew we'd be heading for as soon as we arrived was Vöner, this all vegan kebab joint serves frankly enormous seitan doner sandwiches which come with your choice of herb, tahini garlic or chilli tomato sauces. I went with tahini garlic because if it was up to me I'd make it a law that people must put garlic on everything!
We both love to explore cities on foot and ride the u-bahn so we went all over the city eating, meeting dogs (real and not!), looking at street art and taking pictures of everything!
Our favourite place to warm up and chill out was Ohlàlà Tartes Shop. I fell in love with this beautiful French style cafe on my last trip to Berlin in 2011 and I'm happy to report that Tabitha now loves it as much as I do. We endeavoured to try as many of the delicious things on offer as possible and started with hot chocolate and flavoured lattes. My hot chocolate was delightful, I love this style where you mix the warm milk with the melty chocolate, it's so creamy and decadent.
I got super overexcited when I laid eyes upon the crepe menu, I might've even done a little squeak! I adore crepes especially the savoury cheese stuffed kind and they aren't something I often stumble upon.
As was only right in this establishment I chose a Parisienne crepe which came filled with ham and cheese. It was absolutely perfect, I mean how can you go wrong with a melty cheese stuffed crepe?!
This cafe has an amazing selection of sweet treats filling the counter and tempting your tastebuds. We endeavoured to work our way through as many as possible starting with this beautiful and perfectly light chocolate mousse cake.
I also tried a pear mousse bomb which was filled with an even lighter mousse than the previous cake, something I hadn't thought possible, hidden inside were some sweet delicious pear pieces.
Tabitha taste tested this gorgeous chocolate nougat thing that I forget the name of, it was dense and filled with a gooey caramel, definitely an intense dessert option.
Another of my favourite discoveries from previous trips was Viasko, I ate lunch there twice last time I visited Berlin and this time we went for dinner where we started the night as we meant to go on, with booze! These cocktails were up there with the best I've ever tried, my TransMelonMan was so good that I finished it in record time and had to order another before our food had even arrived.
We arrived around 8pm and quite a few menu items were done for the day so I decided to go with a salad starter...
...and my companion had the soup of the day which, to her delight, was mushroom. My salad was delicious but really huge and super filling for a starter, the mushroom soup was simple, rich and beautifully creamy, everything I remember dairy and cream laden mushroom soup to be.
My main was this huge tofu and sweet onion covered Flammkuchen, a dish I'd seen on many a German menu but never tried. The cheese portion was a mix of homemade nut based cheese, a melty dairy cheese alternative and tofu.
Tabitha ordered the seitan gyros, a classic choice and Nick's favourite dish at Viasko. Our mains were tasty for sure but we both agreed that they were far, far too salty, the combination of that plus the slow service when we needed our water glasses refilled meant that we only finished around half of our mains. I would definitely still recommend a visit to Viasko though, I love the atmosphere there and 90% of the food I've tried has been outstanding.
If you've been to Berlin recently or follow me on Twitter or Instagram one place I'm sure you've noticed is missing from this post is Veganz, Berlin's amazing vegan supermarket chain. Don't worry I haven't forgotten about it I just loved it so much that it's getting a post of it's very own, watch this space!