Shiso Burger Alte Schönhauser — Restaurant in Berlin

Shish Burger never gets old. Very high quality, Japanese-American fusion comfort food.

TLDR; One star less for this newly opened location because some staff have an attitude.

Long version: their seating policy outside is cryptic at best and an insult at worst.

Several times during lunch breaks I was told we could not sit ‘there’ (my choice) and had to sit ‘elsewhere’ (waitress's choice).

Only for ‘there’ to be given to someone else two minutes later even though neither ‘there’ nor ‘elsewhere’ were marked reserved, all other tables were empty (as the place had just opened as we arrived) and were consecutively given to other patrons as they arrived (all without reservations too).

For context: the tables outside sit 6–8 people and are long, parallel with benches on two sides. I.e. you always share these tables with other guests when the place is full or unless you come as a group of that size. And as I said: every time we arrived all tables were free.

I guess given the current staffing situation in the wake of the pandemic the owners had to possibly make dubious choices as of what provenience some of their hires are.

I.e. as my partner put it aptly: some people need to feel important even though they are ‘managers of nothing’.

All my life restaurants in this country let you choose seats freely on any table not marked reserved. Lately we seem to get to the useless practice of assigning tables to people to make a place look more fancy (even fancy places of my youth didn't have welcome desks, maybe I'm just old).

The truth is that this just wastes resources (staff time) but may instill a false sense of importance to either staff or patrons. No one I know...

Horrendous service. We wanted to order food and as there were no seats available inside so we took a seat at one of their tables outside. They told us they wouldn’t serve us in the outside area, so we thought nevermind, we don’t need a server in the outdoor area, we can just get it to takeaway and eat our order under the awning quickly, as we didn’t order an elaborate meal anyways and simply wanted to have a quick snack and be shielded from the rain. Unfortunately they only told us after we had already ordered that it was not possible for us to eat in the outside area and asked us to leave the premises altogether. When I asked a second time if it was then possible to sit at the bar where there were 6 available seats at the time they said that was also not possible since we had now already ordered for takeaway and that there was another party waiting to be seated (two young women which didn’t actually end up being seated at the bar). One waiter said he had communicated all this to my friend prior to ordering which was a blatant lie. Thus we were forced to stand on the street in Berlin Mitte in the pouring rain to eat. This is unlike anything I have ever experienced in Berlin or any other city and I am horrified at how this establishment treats its customers. I also don’t understand why they would leave benches and tables outside and not visibly close the area off if nobody is allowed to sit there. To say we were disappointed would be an...

The food was fine, but the experience was terrible. I went in September 2022 and this disastrous experience still irritates me every time I think about it.

I placed an order online for take out. When I arrived to get my order at the time that I scheduled, the employee said there had been an issue in the kitchen and it would take another 15 minutes. I said that was fine and went outside to wait. I work in customer service and so I understand that sometimes things go wrong and things do not go as planned. After 30 minutes of waiting I asked if my food was ready and they said it would be ready soon. After an hour of waiting and seeing countless people's food come out, one of the waitresses finally came up to me and said she had mistakenly given my food away to another customer. She told me this after I had already been waiting for an hour at this point (most of the time standing because there weren't seats available). It then took another 20 to 30 minutes for them to finally get me my food.

While they apologized, I really felt like my meal should have been free at that point (that is probably my overly American perspective on it). The food was fine, nothing special. It'd give that 3 stars. If I could give the service 0...