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101 Fairmount W. (Corner St-Urbain)
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Tel. 270-3000. Every day 11:30am-11pm. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access. Realistic cost of dinner for two with wine, taxes & tip: about $70.
 There should be a plaque on the front door of this restaurant: "You are now leaving the Canadian sector."
On a cold, frostbitten night, just as the fingertips that poked out of my gloves were near freezing, I was ejected from the ancient taxi that had stopped halfway down the street. I had no idea where I was, so I started walking in what I thought was Berlin's general direction.
After stumbling forward almost to the zebra crossing, I spotted it: the Wall!
Well, one wall, anyway, on the side of the building that houses Restaurant Berlin. All of a sudden, things started looking up.
My contact was already at the table, poring over his notebook and nursing a vast pint of Hoegaarden—a Belgian brew. No matter, the Belgians were neutral in all this, and he knew I knew it. I knew he knew I knew it, too.
"Apple schnapps!" I mumbled furtively, discarding my old leather coat and rubbing my hands together over the candle in the center of the table.
"It's good here," he murmured in return. "Sit down."
"Where is Markus?" I whispered tremulously.
"Not here—it's Monday," my contact hissed, eyes darting around the room. I knew Markus as the shadowy boss, the behind-the-scenes figure who kept the machinery oiled: Markus, the owner of Berlin.
"He's off Mondays."
 "Ahhh." It was an exclamation point. Now there was nothing between me and my Debreziner.
To those of you who've been hanging around in the Soviet Sector all these years (you folks who frequent Troika know who you are) Berlin is the sartorial maestro of only a handful of German restaurants in Montreal. It is comfortable in its exclusivity. In the trendy Laurier district, Berlin is the place German and Austrian ex-pats turn to when the going gets, well, soccerish, and other things Eurocentric.
The conversation around us the relatively quiet Monday we were there was in a large portion German. The sole waiter, while starting off relatively at ease, was hopping energetically from table to table by mid-evening—no time at all to linger and discuss the relative merits of Cordon Vert versus Cordon Rouge. However, this was to be expected—after all, my contact and I had squandered all his earlier goodwill by trading codes rather than ordering from the menu.
It's a fairly large space, but also a bit disappointingly ordinary. Bay windows line two entire sides of the restaurant, but there really isn't much to look at outside; just the orange sodium arc-lamp light-bubbles casting harsh shadows on the deserted sidewalks (come to think of it, perfect deterrents for wall-hoppers.)
The lighting is almost impossibly dim at the tables, but that only encourages the trading of small folded-over pieces of paper.
The menu is in the caloric troposphere. We fugitives from vegetarian “Fleischzorn” will take comfort in the fact that the sauerkraut is a vegetable in name only—its brother is pork and its sister is schnitzel.
The range of the menu is large, however: we took part of an appetizer of fried Camembert with a cranberry sauce (those Berliners: such kidders!) which was an experience somewhat akin to sucking hot Cheez Whiz out of a Chicken Nugget with a grape jelly chaser. Hoa, hoa, hoa, hoa, hoa—this is not necessarily a bad thing!
I, being the perverse soul that I am, chose the most evil of the Fleischzorn (meat-haters) taboos: the sausage platter. This is an animalistic paean to the Nordic (Teutonic, Gallic, Gastric) gods that celebrates the consumption of large amounts of quantum fats that qualify for that rarest of scientific classification as “hitherto undiscovered elements.”
But what a platter! Several varieties of hearty, pan-grilled links accompanied by a Herculean portion of sauerkraut and a large hügel of perfectly-fried German potatoes with bacon and onions.
My contact, ever the collaborator, opted for the Cordon Vert: a pork cutlet savaged into submission and surrounded ominously by deep-fried bread crumbs (but described as "juicy, tender, and stuffed with good quality Swiss cheese and lightly sautéed fresh asparagus.") However, the torment was softened with a side order of Spätzle, that cunning imitation of pasta that the Germans do so heartbreakingly well—and all without a recipe from Willi Brandt!. This unexpected gesture of kindness almost reduced my companion to slamming his beer glass on the table for more, but I assuaged his sorrow with a bottle of the Liebfraumilch, (about $22) a remarkable white wine with sweet overtones of the Black Forest.
We both nervously carried our packages of leftovers—essential for our families—as we left Berlin, saying nothing but looking straight ahead. I was almost on the sidewalk when a voice boomed “Wait!” I froze in fear. The voice said “You forgot to sign your bill!”
I chuckled nervously. It was my waiter, holding my bill and a pen. Or maybe it was Markus, pretending to be my waiter, who had been Markus all along.
I knew it had been Markus. He probably even knew I knew it.
—Reviewed by Nick Robinson, Feb. 2003
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