Berlin

The Bird

Want a real burger? Here's the deal: 250g of amazing premium quality meat, ground on order, 100 percent pure cow without any extra ingredients save for a drop of Worcester sauce.

Want a real burger? Here’s the deal: 250g of amazing premium quality meat, ground on order, 100 percent pure cow without any extra ingredients save for a drop of Worcester sauce.

For a fuller experience, order it rare and juicy or medium rare. Or just eat it raw. Purists may cringe at the news it is served on English muffins. But the bun issue is a thorny one in Berlin. Truth be told, there are no decent burger buns in town and any serious burger place has no choice but to resort to more imaginative options. Get over it and revel in the housemade pickles (well-seasoned and crunchy) and the large serving of frikken good French fries.

Back to the meat shelf: Here you’ll also find real Tbones (a rarity in Berlin), Irish Rib-eyes, Argentinean Rib-eyes – all huge, juicy and tender slabs of red meat cooked to order and perfection. For compulsive carnivores this is a very special address, you’ll hardly find better meat in Berlin, especially this side of the city.

Gregg, the guy at the grill, is a New Yorker who learned to cook on a boat in Alaska – ‘on a diesel stove’. Whether this is a convincing qualification or not is up to you but decide after your burger! From his summers spent among fishermen in Alaska, he also brought the ‘duckfart’, a powerful special-recipe shot that would wake the dead.

John, another New York transplant in charge of the bar, offers a large selection of beers, including one-litre steins and tasty Belgium ales.

The mellowness and simplicity of this down-to-earth brick-walled pub melds with the neighbourhood – The Bird is about as easy-going and informal as it gets.