Izakaya WATAPAS — Restaurant in Berlin

I have just moved in this kiez and I was coming back home after work looking for a quick bite to eat as I wasn’t bothered to cook. This Izakaya ( a traditional Japanese pub) took my attention. The food is served in small plates to share ( I personally love this way to serve food), the menu is small but really interesting. I had a deep fried dish( octopus coated in bread crumbs, delicious), a raw dish( salmon tartare, I played safe with this dish), a steamed dish( seasonal asparagus in ponzu sauce) and the absolute highlight of my dinner: gyoza. They are the best one I have tried so far in Berlin. Amazing balance between the filling and the dough parcels, perfectly crispy and outstanding sauce. The prices were more than fair and I personally highly recommend it!

Update 2022: I come here weekly and this place is always consistent.

Averange...

Nice interior design but tasteless and overpriced

It looks a nice modern hip restaurant but the most of the dishes were not good and a few were just horrible. Please avoid anything with Wasabi Butter as they don't taste at all.

For Gyuuniku Grill (grilled beef), I think they used tongue meat (it was just weird and not good) and it was not written on the menu at all. I simply didn't expect any restaurant would use such a part without even mentioning it on the menu. And it was just tasteless. Hottate Butter Sauce was equally tasteless.

The only good dish was Unagi Camembert Roll (eel and cheese roll) thanks to its yummy but fairly standard sauce. Rice were not served very warm and it was cold by the time the last dish was served.

I'm japanese and I've been to quite a few Japanese restaurants in Berlin and there are much better...

Very nice fusion restaurant. They brand themselves to be ‘japanese tapas’ and they are good at it considering how far away from ocean we are here in Berlin. Their staff are japanese as well.

We ordered mussels, salmon & spicy tuna sushi rolls, fried chicken balls, hotate carpaccio (scallop) and octopus. My favourites were the octopus & salmon rolls. Not really impressed by mussels particularly.

Ordered matcha ice cream as dessert, I found it too sweet to be good.

However if you go on a completely empty stomach and want to get full you should order 4-5 tapas per person.

I would go again....