I was living in Berlin when Chancellor Angela Merkel uttered the now-famous words, “Wir schaffen das.” At the time, no one knew what the long-term ramifications of allowing roughly 1 million refugees into the country would be. And while the racist, xenophobic backlash the country is still grappling with is disheartening, in 2015, I remember feeling fiercely proud of Berlin. In that moment of optimism, locals reached out and pitched in to help the new arrivals feel at home.
Today, the number of Syrians living in Germany hovers around 800,000, making them one of the largest diaspora populations in the country. Though integration is never a seamless process, many of those who arrived as refugees are now thriving in German society. Within five years, half have found steady jobs and more than 90 percent now have at least some command of the German language (not an easy feat, I promise you).
As a result, Berlin has seen a welcome influx of Syrian confectionaries, Imbiss, and fine dining restaurants. For diaspora communities, food is often both one of the only available paths to business ownership and a form of soft diplomacy. While there is a danger in reducing a culture to its cuisine, restaurants often provide a crucial counter-narrative to the stories that dominate the media. It’s a lot harder to swallow BILD’s fear-mongering headlines when the owner of your favorite neighborhood spot happens to wear a hijab.
Unsurprisingly, Syrian shawarma has taken root here in a big way, in part because of its resemblance to Berlin’s own greatest culinary export, the döner kebab. This now-ubiquitous staple was born when Kadir Nurman, an entrepreneurial Turkish guest worker, started selling a portable version of the kebabs of his homeland in 1972. While both döner and shawarma are cooked on a vertical rotisserie, the bread, condiments, and geographic origins differ. Nevertheless, the shawarma is an easy sell to Germans and Sonnenallee, a stronghold of the local Lebanese, Palestinian, and Turkish populations in Neukölln, now hosts a string of Syrian-owned spots, including the excellent Aldimashqi, which serves chicken shawarma.
One of the best newcomers of the past year is Albaik Kitchen (Sonnenallee 26d, confusingly located right by Shawarma Albaik, which serves chicken shawarma), which is so good I’ve had three meals there in the past week. There’s no website, phone number or unnecessary frills. Instead, the focus here is entirely on an immense, glistening hunk of lamb. Watching the fat sizzle as it turns is mesmerizing—it’s essentially the Maillard reaction (that bit of chemical magic that makes the bark on brisket taste so great) happening in real-time. Since a shawarma roll here consists entirely of browned, crispy bits, that intense wallop of umami is only intensified.
Rather than use an electric slicer, as most kebab shops do, the cooks here shave off meat to order by hand before piling it on a lamb fat-brushed pita with a garnish of herbs, raw onion, and sumac. Pomegranate molasses, tahini sauce, and hot sauce all get drizzled on top before the whole mess toasts on a charcoal grill. After rolling it up, the cooks dunk one side of the sandwich in lamb drippings, then press it against the blazing heat of the rotisserie grill. The result is faintly charred, deeply savory, a little sweet, with notes of cinnamon and spice in the backdrop. It costs €2.50.
What I’m Reading
On the subject of refugees, Returning to Nowhere (The Point) by Berlin-based Syrian journalist Riham Alkousa is one to read and reread. It stays with you.
“I have lived and reported from the heart of peaceful, prosperous Germany for more than two decades but am still not entirely steeled to the jabs to the gut you can get walking through its public spaces. No one does memorials quite like the Germans, accosting you in the streets as you go about your business. Particularly in Berlin, the past is never the past, even in a city with a knack for constantly reinventing itself,” writes Deborah Cole in this moving walking tour through the present and ghosts of Berlin. In a time when we’re all thinking a little bit harder about how to memorialize the past, Where history never lets you be (AFP) has a poignant relevance that extends beyond Germany.
A New Orleans Chef Navigates Disaster (The New Yorker) is extraordinary. Few writers could capture the struggle restaurateurs are facing in such granular, moving detail the way Helen Rosner does here.
Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found is one of the greatest nonfiction books I’ve ever read, so it was a thrill to follow his walking tour with Michael Kimmelman through Jackson Heights, Global Town Square (The New York Times), one of the most diverse corners of the planet.
“As COVID-19 brings an untimely end to tens of thousands of restaurants and bars across America, it’s hard not to feel as though a chapter of nightlife has closed. And while restaurants and other food purveyors are struggling to lobby for assistance, nightlife proprietors have even fewer options to obtain funding.” writes Dan Q. Dao in his eloquent eulogy, RIP China Chalet, Manhattan's Greatest Queer Nightlife Utopia (VICE).
Elsa Majimbo’s comedy sketches are one of the best things to come out of this hot mess of a year and certainly the best thing about Instagram right now. Tariro Mzezewa’s ‘I Miss No One.’ (She’s Kidding. Kind Of.) (The New York Times) is a spot-on profile of the savvy 19-year-old journalism student from Nairobi.
“Without his hold to drape around my shoulders, to shore me up, I sank into hot, wordless grief,” writes Jesmyn Ward in On Witness and Respair: Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic (Vanity Fair), one of the most painful and powerful things I have read in a very long time.