merold — Restaurant in Berlin

We’d heard great things about Merold, but unfortunately it didn’t live up to the hype. Good things first: the service was good as was the overall ambience, the wine list has some great picks. We came as a large group and had to take the set menu of 8 different sharing plates for 49e per person. The food was very hit and miss, with the 6/8 dishes being a miss. The highlight of the meal was the onion in brown butter - delicious. The starters of cheese and pepper, okay but nothing special. The bratwurst was passable but the vegetarian main course dish was inedible. Some form of boiled kohlrabi in a beetroot sauce… it completely missed the mark. The same, unfortunately, could be said for the desserts. It was clear a lot of thought had gone into the dishes, but ultimately the execution wasn’t there. The desserts highlighted this best: savoury elements built into the dishes which didn’t provide contrast to sweet (which surely was the intention), but rather ended up making them oddly salad-like and a bit sad instead of celebratory way to round off the meal. 3 stars because we were unable to select from the à La carte, and maybe it...

Where to begin… Maybe we were just unlucky but we really had a hard time enjoying this evening: We ordered the 5 course menu for sharing and had to wait 1 hour before the first course arrived (bread and Camembert), then another hour for the second course to arrive (kale & fish). After that the pace picked up a little bit but the service was really not well organized. All 3 staff members attended every table at random it seemed, therefore much less in tune with the needs of each table. While the table next to us seemed to have ordered the bigger tasting menu where cutlery was exchanged after each course, we had to request on our own a fresh set after eating 6 different dishes (sustainability aspects aside). So much for the service. Unfortunately, also the food was disappointing - it was just not to our liking. From the fermented cheese that was too sour to the overly burnt onions and the trio of celery that was just a bit boring. Sorry to be so blunt but the best tasting dish was the warm bread with the Koji butter only followed by...

One of the most interesting restaurant visits for my tastebuds in a long time. I would recommend to go there with at least 4 persons so you can just order the whole menu, which is the best way to do it. I wouldn’t say that every single meal was my to-be-favorite, but by sharing everything, it was pleasant journey. We will maybe go there alone in the future but way more likely when we get visits from friends to spend another evening there. As mentioned we ordered the whole menu, some non-alcoholic stuff and a middle priced bottle of wine and spend around 220€ in all. So its not the cheapest option but we spend a little bit over 3h there and had a fantastic evening. The staff is friendly as it gets even on a evening where they were understaffed because of covid. The owners mom and his wine dealer were helping out ;) So just don‘t go there for a quick meal before heading out, take your time, treat yourself and spend a lovely evening the...