Soul food restaurant in Berlin. If you landed on this site because you googled that phrase: soul AND food AND berlin with Boolean search terms, let me welcome you.
Now for the bad news: there is no soul food restaurant in Berlin. Not the kind you will find in Chicago or the American South. There’s a Jamaican Soul Food place, which is fine, but it involves coconut and pineapple and this is not what I am talking about. I want to propose a soul food restaurant in Berlin, one where there’s fried chicken everyday and when you ask the waitress if the peach cobbler is good today, she answers “you know it.” The Blackbyrds would be playing on the jukebox everyday and sweet tea is what’s to drink. If you don’t want sweet iced tea, you will need to order an UNsweetened iced tea and your beverage will be named for that thing it lacks. But we will still accept you. Don’t know about okra? Soon you will, if you allow it to become a reality. If you don’t like this idea, then you can take your business down to that fried chicken Fast-Food-Kette you and I know from einem amerikanischen Bundesstaat which shall-not-be-named and which was very recently symbolized by a smiling, plantation-owning, whitey-cracker named Colonel S. You think I am serious about this idea? You know I am.
Where did it all begin? Last Friday, I got a visit in my office from a student who invited me to visit her and her mother in Kaiserslautern where they live. Since this student knows I am in Germany most summers, she thought it might be fun to meet then and catch up. “I can take you to Saarbrücken; they have a kick-ass sushi joint there,” she said. Unbelievable. For the first time in my life, I actually have a reason to go to Saarbrücken! I nodded and said, “Sounds great!”
What I was really thinking was: if there’s a kick-ass sushi joint in Saarbrücken, why the hell is there no soul food restaurant in Berlin? I am not interested in the argument that it couldn’t be authentic because not enough African Americans live in Berlin. This is not the point. Soul food should be world cuisine. It would fulfill a utilitarian need to eat soulfully with cornbread and macaroni and cheese and black-eyed peas and collard greens. The restaurant doesn’t have to be sitting in some recreated American neighborhood where black folks live. There is no requirement for a barbershop next door to the restaurant that only cuts black hair and other people with unmanageable curls. No, I imagine this place for anyone who needs it (and many people do need it without knowing it yet). After the foodies and the American ex-patriots and the rap/soul dudes scope out the joint and give the okay, then there will be a table for everyone who cares to connect to their soulful identity. It doesn’t even matter if you are from Thüringen. You’ve got soul somewhere in you.
The place I imagine would be in Wedding, maybe off of Badstraße or Nebenstraße, and just far enough away for you to walk for a bit or get on the bus to go home and take a shower, because you are going to have wash the sugar off of your hands and face from that sweet potato pie you ate.
Of course, by now you know me, I would want a kosher soul food place. So no ham hocks in my fantasy. You think this is foolishness? Think again. One of the best soul food bloggers out there is Jewish my friends. He is not just Jewish, but professionally Jewish: he teaches Judaic Studies and his name is Michael W. Twitty. He’s an African American and that’s not strange at all. He was recently featured in a documentary by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on PBS about African American culture. His blog, Afroculinaria, celebrates the history of the intersection between these two Diasporic cultures and calls it Kosher Soul. It’s eating as social justice and it feels right, not forced. And it belongs in a place like Berlin.