REmake Berlin

[dharold]

Just enjoyed an excellent meal in Berlin. The food at REmake is creative, modern but hard to pin down, shuffling in cards from Asian and Mediterranean cuisine creating interesting mixes of flavours and some unusual ingredients, like the slightly vanilla-ish (and illegal in food in the USA) Tonka bean.

We were warned straight away that service would be slow "as everything is prepared fresh." They weren't kidding. 4 courses in almost as many hours. The longest gap was over 40 minutes.

I went for a four course tasting menu. It began with carpaccio of scallops with chanterelle jam and cinnamon basil - the scallops almost crunchy and releasing an intense flavour. Risotto of kingly mushrooms with quailbreast and truffle jus was the high point of the meal for me. I could easily have finished seconds or even thirds. Grilled Tournedo of filet of beef on black been puree with two types of tomato "kuli" was cooked a little more than I prefer but the puree was excellent and I'll be trying to imitate it at home. I also tried bites of the foie gras (good) and a vegetable side of broccoli in a creamy sauce.

Desserts of Creme Brulee of the tonka bean and raspberry sorbet with fresh fruits, served as a trio, were very nearly as good as the stunning risotto. I was amused to notice that, where as most restaurants serving food at this level are rather precious about tableware, the brulee was served in dishes from Ikea.

A small something followed - single blackberries with with salt caramel chocolate cremes - as we waited for coffee. Unfortunately the talents seems to be concentrated in the kitchen as I had one of the worst espressos I've ever been served in a restaurant. Ouch.

Wine was a 2005 Couvent D'eglise which proved a good fit to the main course and an ok 2001 Les Hauts de Lynch Moussas, Pauillac.

Michelin standard food (without as yet official recognition) at a very acceptable 49e for 4 taster courses (rises to 65e for 6).

It was certainly the most interesting food I've had in over 20 visits to Germany, and I'd send friends, so long as they're in no hurry.

[kpzachary]

Just enjoyed an excellent meal in Berlin. The food at REmake is creative, modern but hard to pin down, shuffling in cards from Asian and Mediterranean cuisine creating interesting mixes of flavours and some unusual ingredients, like the slightly vanilla-ish (and illegal in food in the USA) Tonka bean.

We were warned straight away that service would be slow "as everything is prepared fresh." They weren't kidding. 4 courses in almost as many hours. The longest gap was over 40 minutes.

I went for a four course tasting menu. It began with carpaccio of scallops with chanterelle jam and cinnamon basil - the scallops almost crunchy and releasing an intense flavour. Risotto of kingly mushrooms with quailbreast and truffle jus was the high point of the meal for me. I could easily have finished seconds or even thirds. Grilled Tournedo of filet of beef on black been puree with two types of tomato "kuli" was cooked a little more than I prefer but the puree was excellent and I'll be trying to imitate it at home. I also tried bites of the foie gras (good) and a vegetable side of broccoli in a creamy sauce.

Desserts of Creme Brulee of the tonka bean and raspberry sorbet with fresh fruits, served as a trio, were very nearly as good as the stunning risotto. I was amused to notice that, where as most restaurants serving food at this level are rather precious about tableware, the brulee was served in dishes from Ikea.

A small something followed - single blackberries with with salt caramel chocolate cremes - as we waited for coffee. Unfortunately the talents seems to be concentrated in the kitchen as I had one of the worst espressos I've ever been served in a restaurant. Ouch.

Wine was a 2005 Couvent D'eglise which proved a good fit to the main course and an ok 2001 Les Hauts de Lynch Moussas, Pauillac.

Michelin standard food (without as yet official recognition) at a very acceptable 49e for 4 taster courses (rises to 65e for 6).

It was certainly the most interesting food I've had in over 20 visits to Germany, and I'd send friends, so long as they're in no hurry.

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I am happy to hear that your meal was better than mine. Although, my service was just as slow. I also had scallops during my meal as well, unfortunately they were over cooked but without any caramelization. I had suckling pig confit which was dry. It is so hard to mess up a confit but they achieved it. It was served with a bit of dried fruit, not like dried fruit reconstituted into a nice condiment, just some dried fruit. I can't even remember what my dessert was. Normaly when I have a bad meal I will let it go. I just was so looking forward to trying REmake because i realy enjoy this type of cuisine. It was a very big let down. The worst part was that my date and I were only the second table in the place at 8:30 on a Friday night. I may be able to understand an off night if they were packed but come on!

If you like this type of food but with much better service and much better quality, next time you are in Berlin I reccomend Restaurant 44 in the swissotel. It is really good modern food with true german influence. Not just a new Spanish cusine copycat. And the price point is about the same. I also really liked Facil which is along the same lines. If you go to Franfurt try out Amador.

[dharold]

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking of Restaurant 44 and I'll try it out next time.

Of course my scallops weren't cooked at all, which gave them a similar consistency to overcooked ones but with much more flavour. A very odd experience, but one I rather liked!

There were 5 of us, and we had 11 different dishes; feedback on all was positive though the next day one of my companions did remark that he'd "exhausted his tongue" and he couldn't eat that kind of food everyday. I'll go back, but not until I've tried a few of the other interesting sounding places in Berlin.