Mitte has been my new restaurant Bezirk du jour for a while now. I end up having dinner after work or doing small lunch meetings in the area. Since so many people work or visit Mitte, you can find a very lively and varied area of culinairy delights in the streets of Berlin Mitte. You will have to pay for the luxury of being centrally located in the city’s pulsating heart, but I would say it is mostly worth it. Mitte is definitely an area you do not want to be skipping, if you are into slightly posh and fashionable restaurants where 90% of its clientèle consists of suit-wearing men and women, passionately talking into their iPhones or writing e-mails on their Blackberrys. I like that kind of executive vibe.

Eating Meat in Berlin

So far for popular cellular brand commercials. Back to the food. This week, I ended up in a chain restaurant. If you have read me writing about chain restaurants before, you know I am not a big fan. But sometimes you just end up in one – even without knowing it. Block House I did know. The restaurants are big and quite present in Berlin throughout the city.  The logo with a feisty black bull already suggests they might be specialising in meats. And yes, of course, Block House is a steak restaurants. A beefy place. A restaurant dedicated solely to the eating of parts of Rindfleisch. It is a great and simplistic restaurant if you are having one of your meat binges, not unsimilar to eating fleshy products in the American burger joint the Bird.

Meat Restaurant Block House – Not for Vegetarians

Obviously, Block House is a restaurant you go to if you feel up for a night of eating meat. Sometimes – and I gather men have this all the time – you just need to eat a big steak. And last week, after a couple of gin and tonics, I definitely felt a raging thirst for meat flowing through my veins. So we set off to order steaks, in the Block House restaurant close to the Alexanderplatz, looking out on the Roter Rathaus.

The Block House restaurant atmosphere radiates old-fashioned rustic meat-eating dinner places. Dark wooden furniture and decorations, accompanied with red and white chequered cloths and waitresses with naughty nicknames – Block House has it all. And right in the middle of the back wall, they feature a large semi-open kitchen where the meat receives its final roasting, resulting in many enticing smells wafting through the entire large dining area. A casual, low-key restaurant where you can eat some real meat. If such a thing still exists nowadays.

Block House offers a basic menu with six to eight different kinds of meat – ranging from your classical steak to t-bones, and filet mignon. All supplemented with a big Ofenkartoffel, sour cream and a salad. Additionally, Block House has ‘seasonal’ meat specials, which include specific meats from certain countries – we had Irish beef on offer. Their menu also mentions burgers and other dishes, but if you end up here, you should definitely order a proper steak. I went for a small selection of beef filets, with which I got a nice big potatoe, sour cream dip and salad.

I am one of those terrible people who order meat almost well-done. This time I went for a medium-meets-well-done style of preparation and I was not disappointed. My beef was juicy, yet nicely roasted. I simply cannot say anything but good, well-prepared meat. Certainly a nice place to go to if you are with a couple of friends or collegues to eat meat in a casual and relaxed atmosphere. Very German-esque in its style and will surely make you feel comfortably at home.

Why this restaurant is fabulous:

• Good, real meat. If you are in that meaty mood and/ or a meat lover, you should give this place a try.
• The deco. I love old-fashioned cosy restaurants where I partly feel like I travelled 50 years back in time.

Why this restaurant is less fabulous:

• Do not expect budget meat. A proper piece of cow loin at Block House will cost you at least twenty euros.

Where to go?

Block House (am Alex)
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 7
10178 Berlin
030 2423300

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