Berlin's Version Of The Bánh mì: It's Not A Panini

A while back, on an ex-pat message board I belong to, the question of good restaurants in Berlin came up. Within seconds, my inbox was flooded with negative messages.

“There are no good restaurants here,” one participant said. “If you want good food, go to Austria,” another commented.

And after 10 minutes of this poppy-cock, those of us who love Berlin and do not consider it a culinary wasteland chimed in. We chimed in about the myth that there is no good Asian food here and recommended old favorites like Hotspot in Charlottenburg, or Lon-Men's noodle house on Kantstrasse.

But recently, the list of worthwhile restaurants has doubled.

Asian cuisine may have been treated without its due respect in the past (read: quick, cheap, and greasy), but there is a renaissance happening now, and Berliners are bowing down before the temple of chili, ginger and soy.

While it may be difficult for authenticity fiends to accept this Asian food revolution, it seems impossible not to be happy that the spotlight on Asian food has finally become specific enough to eschew the horrible “pan-Asian” dining curse and actually single out one country at a time.

This culinary awakening is especially true for Korean and Vietnamese food.

The restaurant Kim-Chi Princess on Skalitzer Strasse looks straight out of a spread in Monocle, but inside its austerely deigned packaging, there is excellent long-marinated korean beef to be had here. That meat, by the way, is self-grilled at your table-top, which either stuns German customers into diligent work-like silence or engenders lots of boisterous conversation. I've been twice and the first night was like a surgical theatre, but the next time, the crowd was charmed by the ritual, and the atmosphere reflected that.

The current trend of the moment, however, is the Vietnamese Bánh mì, a sandwich that utilizes the vehicle of the French baguette to deliver a heavenly combination of lightly pickled vegetables like carrots, daikon, and cucumbers, as well as cilantro, chili, and some sort of meat filling, ranging from citrus-tomato sauced meatballs, to cheap ham, to thinly sliced rare beef.

Sandwiches with their own cultural background have had a hard time making a splash in Berlin, mainly due to the fact that Berliners still aren't over their love affair with the panini. Because the panini hit so big here in the 90's, every sandwich—from the po-boy to the grilled cheese—has suffered from the comparison.

If you ask a Berliner what a Bánh mì is, they will tell you that it is a Vietnamese panini, but we know that it is much more than that. Italy had nothing to do with the Bánh mì, but in Berlin, the Germans have more to do with the trend than you'd think.

You know how trends always come in twos? There was that movie The Illusionist which opened the same weekend as that other magician film...Well, in Berlin, the same was true for the Bánh mì, and, as is usually the case, only one of the offerings was good.

I am going to spare you my negative review of the CôCô – bánh mì deli in Mitte. I won't go on and on about how they screwed up my order twice, or how their meatballs have that “I've been sitting in a chafing dish all day,” quality.

The point is, that since there are two competitors, and the price-point is also identical, go to Babanbé, the Banh mi Deli at Oranienplatz. These German brothers trekked across Vietnam with nothing but a glimmer in their eyes and an endless pit in their stomachs, and the hard work paid off.

These Bánh mì may be fancier than the spicy street-food versions I used to eat growing up in LA, but that should not deter you. In fact, the rare wasabi roasted beef they serve at Babanbé may just be the best cheap steak in all of Berlin.

The fact that someone in this city got the Bánh mì right means that I can continue to live here. Now, if someone could get a crack-team to engineer a good bagel here, I might just stay forever.