The Quirkiest Dining Scene in Berlin? Communist Comfort Food

Welcome to Berlin, capital of Germany, where communist dining is experiencing a pungent ascendancy. All over the city, eateries specializing in cuisine from throughout the Eastern Bloc turn out hearty meals for a handful of euros in spartan surroundings whose ability to evoke the past is compromised only by ubiquitous hipster beards.

The glut has its roots in the city’s Cold War past, when the Iron Curtain still cut across its streets, cemeteries and subway lines. While never as diverse as West Berlin, with its large Turkish and Arab communities, the East housed a sizable population of guest workers from the Soviet Empire and its allies. After the wall fell in 1989, most of them stayed and many began new careers purveying the foods of their homelands.

The cuisine also suits a broader sense of ostalgie—a German portmanteau for nostalgia and the East—or renewed interest in the bloc’s faded charms, from Stalinist-era art deco to heroic posters, no-brand product design and, occasionally, unusual comfort foods.

“There’s this thrill about countries being at once exotic and communist,” said Alice Weinreb, a professor at the University of Loyola, Chicago, who studies the culture of German food. “Communism is getting further and further away from reality, so it’s been able to become more exotic and silly.”

Germany has cracked down on commercial operations run by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, such as a hostel in an annex of the country’s embassy. But at Arirang Bulgogi, with no known tie to the regime, business is as brisk as the kimchi pancakes are spicy. The restaurant, located near the former Barnholmer Strasse checkpoint that once divided East and West, is white, sparse and cramped. In such a setting, little distracts from the restaurant’s opulent signature bulgogi, a ground beef barbecue dish that customers prepare themselves over hot plates. Other options on the menu include cow tripe with kimchi and Korean blood sausage with pig liver.

Farther south, close to the East Side Gallery of murals on a salvaged stretch of the Berlin Wall, Russian restaurant Datscha prepares a “Workers and Farmers” brunch platter for two that is easy on the wallet and heavy on the stomach. The heaping portions include marinated salmon, potato pancakes, salmon caviar, scrambled eggs, blini rolls and vast quantities of bread. Other choices include “Greetings from Russia” and “Englishman in Moscow.” At nearby Gorki Park, dumplings come with the “True Russian” option: a shot of vodka.

These days, some say it’s possible to walk from the center of Berlin to its outer districts without losing sight of a Vietnamese restaurant. Not quite, but Vietnamese food, from the authentic to the heavily Germanized, saturates the city’s fabric. The culinary heart of Berlin’s 20,000-strong Vietnamese community is the Dong Xuan Center, where 300 densely packed shops and restaurants nestle in warehouses across 10 acres. The center is a loud, chaotic affair, home to Vietnamese tax consultants, lawyers, nail artists and hundreds of stores that celebrate plastic in all its forms. Its supermarkets, complete with live fish tanks, could have been teleported straight from Hanoi. Restaurants that range from locker- to beerhall-size offer fried pork spring rolls, noodles with multiple types of coriander and sweet corn pudding.

At the other end of the scale in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel—once home to blue-collar workers and Jewish migrants from the East and now the city’s heavily gentrified fashion district—is Monsieur Vuong, a more upscale experience. The restaurant’s orange walls and selection of ginger and lemon grass teas are a constant; its menu changes every couple of days but often features chicken or beef pho and skewers. The food, however, is a meager reward for the patience required to obtain a table. Expect long queues. Visitors with less patience can head to Banh Mi Stable for Vietnamese sandwiches, pork belly and pickles stuffed in a French baguette.

While Vietnam dominates, food from adjacent members of the Warsaw Pact is also at hand. Breslau, a Polish fast-food joint, serves five pierogi options that can be consumed at picnic tables on the sidewalk. Dumplings stuffed with potato, sauerkraut or salmon are lush and addictive, but the Polish wine is better avoided.

More explosive drinks can be found farther north at Cuban restaurant La Casa Buena Vista, which carries mojitos and bazooka-size Cohibas—Fidel Castro’s preferred brand of cigars—at €13 (about $15) a piece. The menu intersperses lists of dishes with pertinent dates, including the year Che Guevara first encountered Fidel Castro and joined his revolutionary movement: 1955. On a recent visit, the restaurant’s boisterous server politely ignored the food order, producing instead a broad platter of grilled beef, sweet potato and fried cassava—because Mother Cuba knows best.

Rather than focus on specific terroirs, some venues celebrate communism as an idea. One is Die Tagung (“The Meeting”), which is less a bar than a shrine to Socialist paraphernalia. Propaganda posters and old-time menus (beer just 0.07 Marks!) line the crimson-red walls. A 3-foot bust of Lenin greets customers at the door. On an early evening last summer, the spell was somewhat broken by the background music—a mélange of American classics ranging from Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” to the Beach Boys classic “Good Vibrations.” At least the bar doesn’t accept

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