Berlin – There’s not much to complain about in my job as a restaurant taster. One thing, perhaps, that is a bit of a shame: I rarely visit the same restaurant more than once, even if I liked it. So a favorite restaurant? I really can’t afford it.
I’ve just checked: my list of Berlin restaurants that I definitely want to try comprises 49 closely written pages; usually with a short description of why they would be worth a review. As more are added, this list has been growing for years. But once I’ve discussed a restaurant, it’s usually a few years before I’m sitting there again. For example, I ticked off the 12seasons. unjustly.
I was there a little over a year ago, in the middle of the pandemic. The 12seasons had a lot of bad luck. Just when the renovation work for this ambitious restaurant project was completed, in which the color black and a show kitchen as the living heart now dominate, it had to close.
The chef cultivates a cross-border style
Back then, the operators spontaneously created “Markt 12” on their terrace in Giesebrechtstrasse. I picked up a beef cheek with chestnut ragout and a pearl barley risotto with wild mushrooms to take away. Back home I could have cried because I knew how good it would have tasted if it hadn’t dried up on the long way back – and if I had at least had a microwave. The chef, Kamel Haddad, a Paris-born cosmopolitan with Algerian roots, struck me as extremely talented.
His concept for the 12seasons is exciting and, above all, plausible: four seasons are not enough for him to express the diversity of nature. Haddad, who had already caught my eye with his intuitive, cross-border style of cooking in the now-closed Neumond restaurant, thinks in smaller units: in micro-seasons, so to speak.
Roland Justynowicz
The 12seasons was renovated for a long time, now black dominates and the show kitchen is the centerpiece.
Month after month he looks at what is currently ripe and traditionally celebrated in Europe and creates a new menu for all twelve seasons with the respective seasonal highlights. At the time, I made a firm resolution to go back as soon as 12seasons was really open. This has been the case for almost a year now. As an excuse, I can only refer to the 49-page list.
However, when I recently received an email in which the two other creative heads of the restaurant, the operators Tim Hansen and Vitali Müller, invited me to come over, it gave me the decisive push. Tim Hansen, the host, said in greeting: The dry spell is now over and all the months have been used for perfection. You are now exactly where you always wanted to be with the kitchen and map.
The food is simply gorgeous
I can absolutely understand that. The food was simply gorgeous. So it would be a pity to keep it from you, even though I wasn’t incognito and dined there by invitation. But I’m convinced that anyone who cooks for the press like they did that evening can’t forfeit their talent so that others don’t like it.
I ate the March menu with excerpts from the current April menu. Depending on your appetite, you can choose four, six or eight courses. With almost every course I wanted to cheer loudly because there was some exciting combination of flavors on the plate. Believe me, that happens extremely rarely, most of the time I think to myself: ah, pointed cabbage and miso, nice, but a little variety would be great.
Roland Justynowicz
The 12seasons was hit hard, the lockdown came right after the reopening.
Haddad kicked things off with a spoonful of poached egg, as creamy as you often get these days, with watercress and black pudding. I’ve eaten something like this before. What was new was that everything was covered in a foam of green curry, and only in such a way that the curry didn’t attack the other flavors.
By the way, there are plenty of foam here, the chef is classically French trained. However, the foams are never senseless optical gimmicks and they always have an opponent in the texture. The beef tartare on artichoke cream was terrific. Nothing special at first glance, but enriched with a wonderful truffle foam, a slightly sweet juniper ice cream and cookie dough for the crunch – really excellent. The shrimp tasted even more exciting. No chef has ever combined it with the sweet and sour passion fruit puree and Jerusalem artichoke colored with sepia. The image on the black plate was spectacular.
The main course was a real dream
The next course was also hard to believe. A menu often falls off after a few dishes. Not here: like Surf’n’Turf, mussels in salty curry foam were combined with a spicy ragù of calf’s head. That alone would be enough excitement for some cooks. Not for Haddad, who places a grilled baby romaine lettuce in the center—actually, the aromatic highlight.
The main course is also a dream: a piece of lamb smothered in a glazed sauce with notes of coffee and chili and acidic and salty banana mousse, eel and pistachio. The combination is as unusual as it is harmonious. The same goes for the carrot dessert with mascarpone, sour cream ice cream and dark liquid caramel.
In Berlin, seasonality usually goes hand in hand with the strict dogma of also having to be regional. A cosmopolitan Frenchman like Haddad bravely overlooks this. Rather, he studies the seasonal calendar on the southern French coast and then does everything to bring these products here in the best quality. Unfortunately, it will be a very long time before I’ll be back in 12seasons again. But you should come here immediately.
Prices: four-course menu 59 euros; Beverage accompaniment 35 euros; six-course menu 79 euros; Beverage accompaniment 55 euros; Eight-course menu 99 euros; Beverage accompaniment 55 euros.
Infos: 12seasons Restaurant, Giesebrechtstrasse 3, 10629 Berlin. Wednesday to Saturday from 6.30 p.m.; Tel.: 030 92 25 80 49. www.12seasons.berlin