Let me tell you something, Berlin is cheap regarding food and the quality you get for your money. Especially the quality over here (West Germany) is sometimes disgusting, there are nearly no good snacks or fastfood available, except from the global companies, which are not on my list of energy suppliers.
Another point I really learned to like about Berlin is, you will laugh at me: Service is surprisingly good in Berlin. So here is the story:
I prefer people doing a good and clean service, even if they treat me a bit like they where something better then me. I totally dislike service personal as soon as it is overmotivated (the standard case over here), too friendly (I just want service, I don’t want to make new friends with waiters in restaurants until I make the step) or just incompetent.
Yesterdays experience fitted all of the above.
He was a waiter who didn’t believe that wine didn’t make it to the menu: “I know it is on there.”
He kept looking for it on the menu in our hands instead of offering a menu that did feature it, after 5 minutes he came back from a talk with the owner to inform us that they forgot to mention wine on the menu (he was grinning, dickhead!). Ridiculous!
We kept calm and asked for his recommendation. He said there were three different white wines and offered a choice from a spanish white wine. that would be a bit like Cabernet Sauvignon, a french white wine that was a bit like Riesling (never heard of Riesling from France, but I might be wrong on that one) or an italian wine that he introduced as something like Pinot Grigio. All of the choices were available for 5 Euro a glas which is naughty. Everything he offered was like something else, none of the offers was something real. It was just like you wanted to get a pair of sneakers and the guy selling them would try to sell you something different telling you it was just about the same thing as the thing you desired. It was a nightmare.
Plus, the wine did taste at it sat in an open bottle for 4 days in the kitchen.
Don’t get me wrong, I can wait patiently for hours if I get what I want, but I get really pissed off when I am treated like an idiot and get stuff that is just bad. If it wasn’t that sad I would laugh all day about it. Just another little story from a big town in Germany that starts with a D.