Apparently good Chinese food is hard to find in Berlin however that doesn’t really stop me from trying to find a good place that serves it. In reading the Berlin & I book in the hotels I’ve stayed at, and some reviews on the net, I set up a dinner outing to Hot Spot. Located on the west side of Germany, we took the U-Bahn all the way over to a new district, and emerged into a completely different looking part of Berlin. Streets seemed wider, and definitely much more gentrified than the area where our work is just now.
Hot Spot is located close to the Adenauerplatz U-Bahn stop, just off a side street from the main street, Kurfürstendamm. There were a few things different about this particular Chinese restaurant. Firstly, they focused not just on classical Chinese (typically Cantonese food), including a number of Hunanese and Szechuan cuisine that tend to be spicier. It’s other interesting difference was a huge wine list, the reflection of the owner’s passion for wines. They had plenty to choose from, many nice organic ones, and many demonstrating the local German varieties. Great to see!
We ordered a small set of starters to share, a numer of main dishes and vegetables that our waitress told us to stop because there may have been too much food. Here’s what we ordered:
Tea Smoked Duck – Wonderfully scented and with flesh that literally fell of the bone. This was highly recommended by some of the blogs I’d read before and definitely didn’t disappoint.
Aubergine – Served with a lovely sauce, everyone marvelled at the succulent flesh extremely tender and addictively good.
Green beans – This is your fairly standard green beans, though extremely well cooked. Crisp on the outside, soft and chewy and slightly charred with the intensity from the wok grill.
Chilli chicken – This was supposed to have three chillis on the menu, and whilst it had some kick, wasn’t the palate numbing, mouth watering variety I had been hoping for. Definitely toned done for German tastes.
Chilli duck – This didn’t fare any better than the chicken in terms of heat levels, though both were still flavoursome dishes.
The extensive menu – Impressive wine list contained in the back.
The service was actually pretty good for a Chinese restaurant although I’m not sure if that’s just because it reflects your average Berlin service. We managed to get by okay considering the waitresses didn’t really speak English very well as we inflicted our slow, and no doubt mangled German on them.
Name: Restaurant HotSpot
Website: http://www.restaurant-hotspot.de/
Found at: Eisenzahnstraße 66, 10709 Berlin, Germany