Allan's ABC — Restaurant in Berlin

Response to Owner: so escalation it is…

To 1-3.: I stated the actual waiting time we had outside of the business - it is up to the reader to decide what to believe, since neither you nor myself can prove our claims. Waiting is fine and to be expected with a brunch place that experiences some kind of hype; what is also to be expected is some rough estimation of the waiting time, since I do not believe you were surprised for the first time by the amount of people coming to you on a Sunday. But what surprised me especially were the several groups (you are right I can not guarantee it were 10 groups/couples, but at least 6 groups I noticed myself) that skipped the line, whereby I can also not know if they had a booking or just a preferred customer status. Yes bookings exist, we failed to book in time (I think we tried around Thursday and it was not possible). The point is to inform the customer about an expected super long waiting time also because of many bookings (in the cold & rain).

To 4.: I said bitter, as in excessively bitter (maybe badly roasted, not sure), not strong; also: Cappuccino = thick milk foam layer & flat white = „flat“ milk foam layer

To 5.: „Tea is water“, lovely - that is correct for your version; normally there should also be some taste… and I hinted towards the missing of that (taste) based on only having little scrapes of ginger that weren’t enough

To 6.: that is actually my favorite: yes we did eat it, since we do not like food waste - are we only allowed to express a negative opinion if we leave your plates untouched? And also we paid the price for the food, food which was not optimal or good in our opinion, but it was still edible

To 7.: Not sure how to react to that one? Is it my turn now to say „no my tongue is not bitter!“ and sth.-sth.-mean-&-unrelated in return? If the overall dish felt just greasy, meager in taste and uninspired, then that is how it tasted for us. The right ingredient still has to be used in the right way.

To 8.: happy to spare you of seeing us again.

General note: I avoided in my remarks to refer to any kind of special authority that I or my friend feel we would have, because I feel that every customer deserves to be treated equally, despite the fact we both worked in the industry.

All comments have to be read in consideration of the proud price level you position yourself at.

Lastly, everyone is free to judge how much they value a business, that decides to respond to an unsatisfied paying customers in the way that you did, going to ad-hominem-attacks (blind, bitter tongue,…), and escalating, in disregard of the facts stated and also the positive mentions of what we believed you did well.

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Service: 50mins queueing time with little to no attention from the service (update, estimation of waiting duration or info that there are 10 groups! with reservations coming in before us) - prompt & commanding tone Inside we were asked immediately what drinks we wanted (which is nice) and pushed to immediately order food too (which was a bit pushy since we were just taking our jackets off)

Flat white: a bitter Cappuccino Hot Ginger & lemon: hot lemon water

Pulled pork dish: dry & bland meat, wasteful amount of creme fraiche that doesnt add anything to the dish, poached egg was good!, 2-3 drops of sauce were hidden underneath a salad garnish underlining that the overl all dish is too dry

Croque monsiur: half a loaf of brioche wasted to fill up the stomach, greasy, tasteless cheese,...

If one were to ask Berliners to compare the importance of style versus substance, it may be assumed they would place a premium on substance. Never the most aesthetic European city, it has drawn outsiders for its unpretentious vibes, gritty authenticity, and come as you are invitation. But places like ABC are reminders that this “poor but sexy” Berlin is perhaps a thing of the past.

Sandwiches made from heaping and awkward chunks of airy bread and generous portions of creamy dressings with expertly placed leaves of mache lettuce are undeniably grammable feasts. But the appeal ends there. My “Eggs Benny”—eggs benedict, of course, at 12 euros with salmon—came with a tranche of sinewy and tough (raw?) smoked salmon that was not the orangey-pink color associated with the fish but a deep and unsettling magenta. The hollandaise was unremarkable, although the egg (singular) was nicely poached. Served with fluffy and tasteless bread, the dish was beautifully presented but ultimately hollow and unremarkable.

If the food misses the mark on authenticity, the service retains the mediocre quality typical of Berlin restaurants. One forgetful server brusquely asked a couple sitting at a table who had been waiting for at least 15 minutes, “Did you just sit down? Because this table is reserved,” to which the couple quickly responded, “You told us to sit here!” But while this is excusable in older Berlin establishments, where quality and affordability reign, here the same service feels insulting.

TL/DR: this is a trendy brunch place that can be found in basically any trendy area of any city. And although very photogenic, they don’t seem to use good ingredients, so the food is at...

They say "If you can't make it in Berlin, you can't make it anywhere" - and this is a typical case in point of how a business can sustain itself on being a "safe space" for non-German speakers (tourists, and entitled hipster temporary local residents) to have the most generic dining (if one can call boring, ubiquitous, uncreative and apparently-inevitable avocado toast, or the dreaded industrial and predictable Sriracha, "dining") experience possible. Amidst the (no-longer-justified) ongoing Berlin hype, all one needs to survive in the city is have a name in English (well, sort of - the punctuation is incorrect) and claim to have breakfast, and the uncreative TripAdvisor (who at one point put Vapiano in the #1 spot) sheep will come to graze on the default kimchi fusion nonsense. In such cases, the food doesn't even have to be good (and in this case it isn't). That's not to say that such mediocre tourist establishments that wouldn't survive elsewhere don't have their time for the too-lazy-to-research and hung over - but this is not the place.

Any of the other nearby breakfast establishments (Benedict, Kaffee.Bar, or even Brekkie directly across the street, all competing for the same non-Germanophone, yuppie demographic) are better on several levels - and odds are those 1) actually bother to clean their silverware, 2) won't mock their customers (plural - we were a group, but that won't happen again, nor individually) when kindly requesting forks and knives not covered in filthy stains, and hence 3) care in the slightest about their customers' experience (or hygiene).

Pick one of those, or anywhere...