What's the time? It's FOODZEIT: Review of the Bite Club street food festival in Berlin

MS Hoppentosse / Bite Club

What have I been up to recently? Have I been cooking anything? Have I been eating something nice? I have not. I was busy going around Berlin and trying to discover every corner, back alley and "hinterhof". So I have been around and not cooking a lot. But I also started checking the culinary scene in Berlin. On Friday, for example, I went to this street food festival called the Bite club. It sounded quite interesting so of course I was in for trying this event, since I really fell in love with this kind of event during my stay in Australia. They really had some amazing food truck culture there and the sheer variety of it was mind blowing.
So for me it was a nobrainer to go and discover this festival in Berlin.

View on the spree with the Badeschiff and the skyline of Friedrichshain

The bite club itself is is situated in the Arena Berlin, alongside the area lies the MS Hoppentosse ship in the spree and on the left hand side thereis the Badeschiff, a floating swimming pool and beach bar in the middle of the Spree. On the area of the Arena one can find a variety of food trucks and stands with snacks and fast food, a DJ is playing some music and some drink vendors are serving good wines, exclusive whiskey and long drinks, beers and soft drinks. So a great recipe to enjoy a hot summer night.

Arroz negro? How can they make the rice go black?

Must be the squid ink in which the rice is cooking

Don't be shy, give us a good portion

Mussel, Gambas, octopus and the black rice

Our first dish to try was the arroz negro, a spanish black rice with sea food. They cook the rice in a lot of squid ink to taint it black. I really have not figured out how they milk the squid in order to get this amount of squid.

the bao burger bar

There also was a bao burger bar that served this kind of a Chinese / Asian style kind of meat with the matching spices, served in a burger paddy with a hand full of coriander on top. But I skipped this offer and went on to search for more food.

Working hard making some Dumplings

Beautiful sign drawing one to the Mexican stand

The mexican working hard

I was tempted by this stand, frying up some corn bread and stuffing it with some fresh Mexican delicacies, but I continued my stroll onward until I found something that reminded me so much of my time in NY, I had to get one of those:

The proud owner of the only NY style pastrami stand on the ground

Even the New York times have written an article about those guys...

I just had to get one and sink my teeth in it to try

The pastrami stand with the best pastrami sandwich in Berlin, if we can trust the taste buds of the New York Times food reporter. This sandwich is really a very good one, and considering that there might be not that many places in Berlin making a pastrami sandwich, I second the opinion of the NYT reporter that this might be the best pastrami sandwich in Berlin.
After the sandwich we continued our stroll and saw more interesting stands and food trucks such as the pie truck

A beautifully made pie truck selling stuffed pies, too bad I was full already

And then I finally discovered the localized kind of the food truck:

They even had a Schnitzel truck, selling Schnitzel in buns, Vienna Schnitzel, Hunter style Schnitzel, etc.. a truely German food truck

This is the Käse Spätzle truck (Spätzle are this kind of hand made potatoe based noodles from the Swabian region of Germany, here they serve them with some very nice cheese and melted onions on top)

Check it out for yourself, German classics explained for foreigners

The Spätzle don't look like those of my grandma but the taste was genuinely good

Even a Spätzle truck was there. Astonishingly, this truck was very well visited, despite the fact that Swabians and swabian food are appareantly well hated in Berlin! I have to say that most likely topics such as reconciliation and national understanding might always start with a good meal. And those Spätzle indeed where a very good meal.
We saw lots more food, wine, beer, fine whiskey and long drinks for a great taste event and to celebrate street food, an idea that seems to be catching on in Berlin.
In comparison with the street foods, which I was lucky enough to sample in Asia, the US and Australia, the food at this event still lacked a little bit of something. There were not many new food ideas, many stands just served some sort of sandwich / hamburger bun with different kinds of fillings inside.
But as the location was really great and the organization was very good, the music was just right and the food, which we sampled, was really tasty and delicious.
I definitely will come more often to this event and I hope that street food in Germany will continue it's success and grow into something bigger, so we can see more variety and interesting food combinations all over Germany, soon.
Some impressions of the party going on until late in the night.