House/ Loft / My home is my castle – Urban gypsy life / Berlin / Germany

My home is my castle, we proudly present the very special housing project for urban gypsies and furthermore a little introduction how to build your own tennis court next to Paul-Lincke Höfe in Kreuzberg / Berlin.
Tennis being one of the most popular games around the world, individuals begins playing the game pretty early. With the lack of space, most have to go through long queues and endless waits before they get a change to hit the tennis ball around the court. Public tennis courts are a few in number and so if you too are tired of waiting or never seem to find an empty court, you could consider building a backyard tennis court. Converting Berlin backyard into a tennis court is a funny idea as well – …Matchpoint!
If you like to go away, watch out for Berlin-City.

Resto tip in Berlin: Margaux

The Margaux is located near Brandenburg Gate. The dining room is striking, with a marble floor, attractive back-lit onyx pillars and display cases holding large blocks of Himalayan salt. Tables are generously spaced, set with good quality linen tablecloths. The kitchen is staffed by a dozen chefs. There is no a la carte menu, just six or eight course tasting menus, including a full vegetarian menu. Chef Michael Hoffmann has a particular passion for vegetables. He has set up a dedicated garden near Berlin to supply the vegetables used in the kitchen, and most of the vegetables on the menu come from this garden.

The wine list has coverages from France, Germany, Italy and Spain in particular, with some rare wines as a 1964 Marques de Murrietta Castilla Ygay and Egon Muller Kabinett Scharzhofberger 2008.

A nibble of chive and mint cream began the meal, the cream sandwiched in crisp bread garnished with garden herbs and cucumber. This worked well, the textural contrast of the crisp bread with the cream effective, and the cucumber and chives tasting very fresh.

This was followed by yeast mousse with fennel and jelly of yoghurt whey. The fennel taste came through well and the mousse had smooth texture. This was closely followed by a strudel filled with cucumber, guacamole sauce and cream of spiced yoghurt, with a cucumber ice cream. This was a very effective nibble, the cucumber having good flavour and the spicing nicely controlled, the spices working well with the guacamole.

The first proper course was mackerel, attractively presented in jelly of veal; the jelly was interesting and had a pleasant meaty taste, but the mackerel itself had a slight chewiness of texture, which I was not expecting. The dish was garnished with a line of of beetroot purée and a parallel line of parsley mouse. The vegetables had excellent flavour.

Next was sweet pepper with sepia and cuttlefish, green onion with spinach beets, candied lemon and a warm cream of vegetable as sauce, with a garnish of leeks. The vegetables were excellent but the cuttlefish was so so….

This was followed by a warm candied eggplant with salted salad, smoked cream of Jerusalem artichokes and a garnish of artichokes with a little salt. This was an unusual dish, as it is uncommon to find sweetness in an aubergine, but the salt balanced out the sweetness nicely.

Dessert came in three stages. Ice cream with biscuit and pickled pear had a savoury pear juice service on the side. The pear was fine. Next was foam of spruce with spruce sprout ash and jelly of hibiscus, with a biscuit of esterhaze and garden herbs.

An ice cream of praline with flamed nougat mousse with both fresh and picked fig, though in this case the fig was merely pleasant rather than of particularly yummy.

This is a restaurant that can produce genuinely top class dishes, and the control of balancing flavors was impressive. Yummy.