The Best Places in Germany

A currywurst window tacked onto the side of a U-Bahn station, Curry Baude is the kind of place tourists walk past on their way to the famous spots. The sausage hits that rare crispy-yet-juicy balance, and the ketchup-to-curry ratio is handled with more seriousness than most things in this city. Service is gruff, even by local standards, which somehow only adds to the appeal. Bring cash, keep it moving, and don't ask questions.

The sourdough pizzas with 'nduja or mushroom cream are reason enough to find this side-street dining room in Prenzlauer Berg, but the chef's menu resists that label and most others. Call it a creative bistro, where pork shoulder with local vegetables sits near a milcheis sundae that quietly argues for German-American fusion as a legitimate lifestyle choice. The room is small and unhurried, the kind of place a neighborhood keeps to itself as long as possible.

The Wiener schnitzel here arrives roughly the size of a dinner plate, which is either the point or a warning, depending on your appetite. Felix Austria is a candlelit, old-school Austrian restaurant on Bergmannkiez's increasingly polished main drag, serving a tight menu of schnitzel, goulash, and cheesy spätzle to a neighborhood that still remembers when this street was scruffy. Smaller portions are available, in case you'd like to walk home upright.

One of Berlin's very few Yemeni restaurants sits on Karl-Marx-Straße, where the neighborhood defaults to Turkish and Syrian. The cooking pulls from the Arabian Peninsula, India, and the Horn of Africa at once, which sounds like a thesis statement but lands as a bowl of saucy lamb stew with flaky malawah to soak it up. The zurbian, slow-cooked meat over rice with yogurt, is the one to order when you're not sure where to start.

A counter service spot in Prenzlauer Berg turning out Argentine empanadas, from the classic beefy Creole filling the name nods to, through spicy chicken and a ricotta-spinach version that landed via Italy. The shells are soft, wheaty, and smooth, which is either exactly what you want or a useful education in what Argentine empanadas actually are, depending on where you're coming from.

The name signals the menu: larb, the punchy Lao-Thai salad, is the kind of dish most Berlin kitchens don't bother with. This small Thai restaurant in Friedrichshain skips the pad thai and goes regional instead, pulling from Southern curries and other corners of Thailand that rarely show up here. The chef isn't shy with spice, which is its own act of bravery in this city. A tight room, a tight menu, and food that doesn't soften itself for the neighborhood.

A team behind the counter stretching dough rounds by hand tells you everything about the priorities at this Turkish flatbread spot in Gesundbrunnen. Lahmacun comes out fresh to order, topped with ground meat, herbs, and onion, and costs well under two euros apiece, which invites a certain reckless quantity. The chargrilled kebabs in fresh bread with a punishingly tangy garlic sauce pull equal weight. Expect a wait out front; the place is small and not a secret.

The flatbread here is that specific combination of crispy outside and pillowy inside that makes a döner kebab feel like a structural achievement. This counter-serve spot in Schöneberg does chicken döner: tender, well-marinated meat, grilled vegetables, fresh herbs, a hit of lemon, and your choice of garlic or sesame sauce. Locals who know to avoid the tourist queue around the corner fill this place instead, which tells you most of what you need to know.

Dozens of Thai vendors set up under bright umbrellas in a Wilmersdorf park on weekends, April through October, weather permitting. It's an outdoor street market tradition that's been around for decades, drawing people from across the city for homemade noodle soups, curries, and Isan-regional dishes cooked out of home kitchens. A recent relocation shifted things to Württembergische Strasse, just alongside the park, but the format stays the same: bring cash, find a patch of grass, eat well.

Hand-pulled biang biang noodles in the Shaanxi style, wide as a belt and springy enough to make you think twice about every bowl of pasta you've ever eaten. This is a casual noodle shop, so expect a line, a short menu, and a very low bill. The vegan options hold their own alongside the beef. Berlin opened a third location partly so the city could stop queuing quite so dramatically for the first two.

The building has been serving food and drink since the 1600s, which makes the laminated tourist menus feel almost beside the point. Zur letzten Instanz is a classic Berlin tavern in Mitte, all low ceilings and a courtyard garden, with a menu built around pork in its most serious forms. The eisbein, a slow-cooked knuckle, is the thing to order. Charlie Chaplin apparently ate here, which the staff have not forgotten.

On the banks of the Spree, this Berlin steakhouse has been the city's most reliably glamorous social theatre for as long as anyone can remember. Dry-aged cuts from Germany, the US, and Japanese and Australian Wagyu go under a high-temperature broiler, and the room, all modern art and soft lighting, fills with politicians, artists, and regulars who all pretend not to notice each other. Ranked among the world's top steak restaurants, it earns that company.