Kreuzberger Himmel — Restaurant in Berlin

I visited comparable projects before. And I consider myself not to be a demanding customer. However, about my experience at Kreuzberger Himmel, I would like to comment: *we were welcomed with an offensive joke *we were told by another waiter the soup of the day would be a "spaghetti soup",... I ordered one, and was served a lentil soup. *One dish we ordered was a salad. We received a plate with largely humus on it. We pointed out that we didn't order this. ... The answer was, that this is the salad we ordered -- just some ingredients are missing. *the quality of the food was varying. However, the bread was the super-marked-kind and the olive oil too. I.e. the prices seemed rather high for 5 of 7 dishes we had. *One dish I wanted to take along in a doggy bag. Surprisingly, even though the doggy bag was only partially filled, it contained only parts of the dish. *we could hear people having similar problems on other tables. the place was packed. Still, the waiters were kind of overwhelmed by the number of customers, and being noticed took some effort. *the places in-between the tables are small. Some people brought their dogs. However, the dogs were visibly stressed out. One even started barking at someone. ... dont bring your dog and expect to touch someone...

Bad on every level. When I entered I was greeted by a non-english speaking waiter. Ok, I get, we are in Germany where the official language is German and you don't have to speak other languages even though the restaurant is located in a popular tourist area. Another waiter came over and figured out that maybe I wanted a seat (intuitive people are my weakness) so he sat me down... on a table with 2 other couples. Ok, I get it, it was busy and maybe they didn't have enough seating but at least they show willingness to serve me. No menu was offered like 'why do you even enter if you haven't checked the menu already', duuh. 5 min later the first waiter arrives and tries to ask for my order (remember, he doesn't speak English) when he spots I don't have a menu (great spot, 10 points to Gryffindor). He pulls out a folding postcard-like English menu with 5 dishes and no prices written. Like, who cares about the price, you just wanna stuff your belly, right? Anyway, 2 min later the people on the next table finish ordering so the waiter passes me over a proper 5 pages menu... in German!! At this point I've already lost all hope so I just left. If you can't get even the basics right, I don't want to see the rest of...

I came here as I thought the concept was great, plus I’m a huge fan of Levantine cuisine having spent months working in Lebanon and having visited Syria in 2019.

This said, everything was a disappointment: starting from the shared table with another couple (though I booked a table in advance — no privacy) and the room was extremely cold and had to eat with my coat on. Tablecloth was spotted and dirty in many places, this isn’t fine for a medium price range restaurant, no doubt about this.

The food: I would only save baba ganoush, sadly muttabal wasn’t available as many other dishes. So I ordered koussa bil Laban and the portion (see picture) was embarrassing small for the price. There was hardly any meat in the zucchini.

My mum got kibbeh. I tried them. They were tasteless, completely lacked of spices. I could only taste the bulgur from the shell. She couldn’t finish them.

The service was not attentive at all. I sadly won’t be back, one star cause 0 isn’t an option.

Good Levantine food is somewhere else in Berlin, at fair prices and with Levantine portion sizes, not...