Backroom Cantina at the Tausend Dinner, Saturday 17 April 2010

For April, we will be doing dinner at an unusual place, and it is also not a place for people with dainty palates. The menu is described as Asian, Iberico-American, which means that the cuisine covers 3 continents in one sentence. It is also quite exclusive, with not many tables available and such exclusivity also means that this dinner is likely to cost rather more than 50 Euro with drinks and stuff. This is more than the spate of dinners we have been having over the last few months so this event is meant for those of us with rather more adventurous tastes.

Anyway, this is a little bit of a strange place as it is really located at the back room of a bar. The bar is the Tausend Bar, Schiffbauerdamm 11, 10117 Berlin and you have to ask for where the Backroom Cantina is inside the bar. The good news is that it is very close to Friedrichstrasse S-Bahn and U-Bahn so it is very central to everyone. The only other thing is that this dinner starts rather earlier than usual, at 7:30pm so please make sure that you arrive well on time at the restaurant as we won't be having our usual pre-dinner drinks at another bar. The reason is that there are 2 sittings at the restaurant and ours is the first sitting, but we will make up for it by drinking at the Tausend Bar or maybe even at the Broker's Bier Boerse (where the price of beer fluctuates all night)! The website for the restaurant does not tell you much and it is on http://www.tausendberlin.com/ if you want to have a peek.

So if you are interested in some fine multi-continental dining and have a few Euro to spare, do come along for this dinner. We currently have only a small booking but may be able to squeeze in just a few more people if required. As usual, if you want to come, drop me an email and if you make it on the list, you will be informed by Weds 14 April latest. I know this is very short notice but I wasn't sure of my own availability to be in Berlin until just today.

See you soon!

Chris

How it went on the night...

This is a truly hidden place. Underneath the S-Bahn bridge at Friedrichstrasse, one has to ring the bell on a rather unassuming metal door. Through the door (if they let you in), you find this eclectic restaurant totally decorated in black with rather moody lighting at the back of the bar. The restaurant houses a cool open kitchen, everything is freshly done and don't bother trying to come here without a reservation. We all went for the "best of starters" and "best of main dishes" and this turned out to be a good choice.

We had a variety of tapas style starters, eaten with chop sticks and all of it was pretty excellant, especially the sashimi salad with miso dressing. We also enjoyed the cevice which is quite nice and unusual as this is a Peruvian dish. The grilled prawns with garlic and the grilled pepper - even though very tasty were more or less average. For the "best of main dishes" we had black cod with a sweet crust that melts on the tongue while eating. Also the beef was cooked just right and came sliced on top of a nice vegetable platter. With it came flavoured rice, coriander polenta and Japanese noodles in a miso-style sauce. Even thought we were pretty all stuffed by now, we still bravely went for two different desserts. These weren't too brilliant, to be honest, (eg. the Green Tea Creme brullee didn't taste much of green tea, and my chocolate pudding was a little overcooked) but our expections have been also very high after enjoying the fabulous dinner menu. The wine selection is tolerable, and not terribly cheap but still worthwhile. After so much food, we just about managed to stagger to the stylish bar to enjoy a few drinks. Also there, they had a lot of unusual exotic drinks compared to other cocktail bars. Overall, a very pleasant evening.