BLOCK HOUSE Friedrichstraße — Restaurant in Berlin

A friend suggested we meet for dinner at the Block House, an American-style steak chain restaurant with locations across Germany. We agreed to meet at the location by the Friedrichstraße Bahnhof in Berlin-Mitte. When I mentioned my plans to a cohort, they insinuated that the restaurant was "touristy". My experience was somewhat mixed. My dinner companion was seated at the bar with a great vantage point of the room and wanted to dine there as well, where we could people watch. As such, the occasion and ambience were relaxed. The service was attentive and friendly. Drink service was prompt. Menu service and ordering seamlessly followed. The order came up within 20 minutes. A simple porterhouse cut cooked rare and a baked potato served with sour cream, chives and a side green salad. The cut of beef was surprisingly tender and cooked to my exact specification. However, it was clear the potato was not baked. Rather, it appeared to have been wrapped in a moist towel and steam cooked in a microwave oven. The consistency was anything but baked as the potato quite literally fell apart to the fork. It was mushy, watery tasting and after a single bite, decidedly inedible. I sent it back. The kitchen's second attempt got it only a little better. The potatoes at this chain restaurant are apparently purchased in bulk, frozen to preserve shelf life and then thawed via microwave, which accounts for the end result. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by the decent quality of my steak. The salad was alright. Desert, adequate. A local beer. Dinner for two ran around 80€, which isn't bad for a steakhouse. If I should return in the future, it will be for lunch with a...

I'll start with the positive. The steak was fantastic. Very moist, tasty, easy to chew and not an ounce of any gristle. However, the rest of the food was fairly average. If you are serving steaks for €44+ I would expect quality sides. The chips weren't bad, but I could have got similar from McDonalds. The potato gratin looked like someone had just slopped some macaroni cheese on my plate. And the biggest issue of all...why are there no sauces with the steaks??!! Is that a German thing? I expected a choice of the usual Peppercorn, Bearnaise or Mushroom sauce. But they don't serve it. First steak restaurant I have ever been in that doesn't offer this. The sides need to be upped in quality. I want my chips to look like some effort has gone into them and not just taken out of a frozen chip bag, and the gratin should look like gratin, and in a separate side dish. For the prices being charged, it just lacks that extra quality. The ambience was fine, a busy bustling restaurant. My only gripe would be that the table are a little too close together. We had some other diners gawp at our food for an uncomfortable length of time, as they were sitting about a foot and a half away.

One final gripe is the size of bottle of coke you get. Any restaurant that serves 250mls of coke seems to just want to get as much money out of you as possible, because its rare that you won't have to order more than 1 drink to get you through a whole meal. Just give us 330mls. Don't think customers don't notice,...

The food there is amazing! I really like it, but I give three stars because of the service, I went with a friend there her first time here, the service at first was pretty nice, very friendly the waiter, my friend asked me if here is obligatory to leave tip, because in Spain it is an option, which well is not obligatory but usually people leave a 10% of the bill on tips, I give it only when I really get well served, and by that I don’t mean self service, or when the waiter just bring food and don’t even look at my face. So in the moment to pay, it was like 45€ more or less, the waiter came and said something like: do you like to leave a tip, and gave us options, which make you feel forced/ashamed if you don’t, I can’t explain the feeling, because we didn’t even said how we would pay if card or cash, and he asked that straightforward, we looked to each other like: 🤡, we indeed leave tip, but it was very unprofessional from the waiter. I do understand that is a complement of the salary, I worked in restaurants in many years, but I never made a customer feel obligated to give me tips. That’s shameful and is a German service thing. I never felt this way in Europe than here tho. Is nice to receive tips I totally agree, but I recommend you to check a friendly...