Restaurant Bieberbau — Restaurant in Berlin

(Last visited 1/24/2023.) While working in Hamburg, Germany for the first time visiting this wonderful country, I decided to take a drive down to Berlin and visit the biggest city in the country! Often when in Europe my wife and I like to visit Michelin Star rated restaurants because they're typically cheaper, more available and the tip is included (thus cheaper)! Lol. So today, we checked out Bieberbau, a Michelin 1-Star restaurant!

Atmosphere/Appearance: Set a bit outside of the city center is this gem that genuinely is a bit hidden among some residential neighborhoods. This place is built inside an old studio house that was built at the end of the 1800s. The decor is so cool, laid back and filled with history. The carpet is bright red, the archways are so incredibly detailed and the energy in here was laid back.

Service: Like an any Michelin-rated restaurant, the service was EXQUISITE. Beyond good. However, almost everyone has an accent of some kind so you have to really pay attention to when they're explaining things to you. Needless to say, we had no complaints.

Food: This is going to be the hardest part for me to explain. Lol. Since I wasn't taking notes on each dish as I was eating them, I can't describe everything to you. What's most important is that the food is TOP TIER. The menu is designed to tell a story of the colder months in Germany, which it does. One thing I do absolutely love about these kind of tasting menus is that when you first sit down to check out the menu, you see 6 courses. But there's almost always extra. Lol. Amuse bouches come out then the pre-desserts after the savory courses conclude. The dinner winds up being like 9 and you're completely stuffed.

Value: I mean, look. If you're coming to a place like this, you should know you have to pay to play. However, Bieberbau is willing to work with you. So they have several menus you can choose from and you can choose 3 courses for 86.50€. However, there are MANY more courses you can add to seemingly create your own menu and it's only an addition 12.00€ to do so! So if you're on a date and you get some wine, you can easily come out around 400.00€ at the end, but like I said, this is an experience, a journey in food. Totally worth it.

In conclusion, I'm sitting in Berlin, Germany RIGHT NOW as I type this over 2-years later and this took me back down memory lane. I'm considering revisiting this place since they change their menu often... We shall see... Thank you...

I was so,so,so, disappointed. I had been looking forward to this and it was a Christmas present to myself. Dinner started with a choice of wine from the pairing selection. It was very good. The one bite buns and amuse bouche were good. Only just. Then things went downhill. I was so looking forward to being presented with dishes that were too pretty to eat. None of the dishes looked like the photos. Everything was presented terribly and looked unappetizing and not fresh. My starter had RAW Jerusalem Artichoke haphazardly smeared into the sauce. Served in a boring bowl. It was horrible. Tasteless. I had the steamed cod for the main. Cod is a bit lacking in flavour at the best of times. Pretty much raw and no seasonings. It was not fresh and flavourless. When I eat fish in the style of sashimi I want it to be so fresh that it tastes like the sea. The only flavoring came from a bland beet risotto. Beet risotto at a Michelin star restaurant? What a cliche. They weren't even able to concentrate the beet flavour. On the fish were raw tasteless button mushrooms. The presentation was poor. Then came a pre desert. Sorbet. I have already forgotten what it was or tasted like. Dessert was goat cheese creme brulee and pear. Two bites. Goat cheese smeared on the bottom of a boring bowl. Virtually no brulee. A teaspoon sized quenelle of sorbet. No taste of pear as said. Not even the sechuan peppercorns had flavour. Finally some complimentary petit four served on an out of style piece of wood that has seen better days. A soggy profiterole. It was either filled too soon or was from the day before. A dry, very dry pistachio cookie and a stupid jelly. The jellies from the supermarket have more flavour. My dinner mate had the venison. She was satisfied but I could see from across the table that it too had something wrong. The presentation was terrible. The leaf cutouts which look so fresh and tasty in photos looked stale and were haphazardly pushed into the teaspoon of sauce. Service was good but the restaurant itself doesn't have as much atmosphere as I would have thought with the beautiful plaster work. I didn't say anything to my dinner mate but when I got home I was practically in tears. If you're looking for a more expensive restaurant or one with a Michelin star I would suggest choosing one that is a little bit more expensive than Bieberbau. Don't take a chance if you're going to pay 150 euros or more for dinner. Again, very disappointed and I...

Superb dinner at Restaurant Bieberbau last week. Sensible prices for the quality, charming historic surrounds and warm welcoming bi-lingual service (our German is far inferior to the floor staff's English).

Michelin recognition is often associated with overt technique - foam, mist, ingredients pretending to be something else. That can be fun but sometimes you just want a proper dinner full of seasonal flavour- which is what Bieberbau delivers in spades.

There are two menus and you can pick and choose between them. Cleverly, if you want to sample a number of dishes, they will adjust the serving sizes so you all leave feeling replete and not uncomfortable.

The menu changes every six weeks. We encountered pure Autumn - beetroot soup with coconut and lovage, caviar with (of all things!) a kind of paprika custard, steamed cod with risotto, sublime venison and so on to a perfect vanilla ice cream with cous cous with raspberry and parsley gel dots.

The Owner and Head Chef, Stephan Garkisch, is not throwing his skills at you- it's much more subtle than that but apparent in every mouthful. Perfect blends of seasonal flavours, a lovely crunch or textual element in every dish, a remarkable lack of obvious seasoning (which you also feel no need for). You just know that everything has been thought through - that ice cream will have been practised 50 times and you will enjoy the simple perfection of it.

With a set menu you often have one favourite. Here is the opposite - we found it hard to single out the highlight as all was consistently excellent and not a single dud. Amazing.

On wine, very reasonable offers of half bottles to go with the current menu after a house champagne cocktail. We had the helpful assistance of Owner and Front of House lead, Anne Garkisch also in advising on the odd local wine by the glass to go with a course, or digestive with coffee.

Loved it and would...