Saturday, January 31, 2009

Hallo Berlin - Return to Taqueria

9. Hallo Berlin Express
744 9th Avenue between 50th and 51st

After receiving numerous accolades from midtownlunch and winning the 2005 Vendy Awards, Hallo Berlin Cart opened a full restaurant on 10th avenue and a smaller express restaurant on 9th avenue. Hallo Berlin serves 10 different kinds of wurst sausages and a number of other Eastern European dishes like schnitzel, goulash, and stuffed cabbage. Wanting to come here for some time, I finally braved the walk uptown and ordered the double soul food combo ($8.00) which consists of chopped up pork bratwurst and a pork/beef frank mixed with fried german potatoes, sauerkraut, onions and mustard. The sausages had a crisp casing with a tasty and salty filling, though certainly not the best sausage I've ever had. The potatoes were crunchy on the ends and the sauerkraut was probably from a can. The food was prepared well and left me satisfied but it wasn't anything special and certainly not worth the hype. On top of all of this was the service that was unbearably slow for a place that has most of its food prepared already and had few people to serve. The one item that did tempt me to come back is that the restaurant also serves various german beers in 17oz steins for $8.00 that look awesome.

Tacqueria y Fonda Part Deux
See original post for location info

Just wanted to add a couple of comments about Taqueria since I returned to try some new items. I admit that I was tempted to order the burrito again but I saw someone else order the tamale and it looked excellent. I went for the beef tongue taco ($3.50) and the chicken tamale ($3.50). The beef tongue came out first. They presented a generous serving of diced grilled tongue with cilantro, tomatoes and onions on top of a corn tortilla (there were 2 there though I'm not sure they meant to give me two). Two were necessary as there was too much food to fit into one tortilla. The tongue was tender and slightly liver-y in flavor, and the corn tortilla was made fresh. I didn't expect the tamale to be spicy but it had quite a kick. The thigh meat chicken in the tamale tasted greasy but the masa (corn dough) was well seasoned and filling.

1 comment:

  1. Quiero Taqueria... por lo menos una vez cada semana. Yum.

    ReplyDelete