Grill Royal

Style:
Meat, French

More:
Excellent and trendy (some say: ueber-trendy) meat restaurant with French and Argentinian touches; big celebrity factor

Reviews:
San Sifton with a beautifully written review in the International Herald Tribune: "The room provides a view of the kind of restaurant scene only a city that has both money and space can provide: a large, airy dining room set under low ceilings, with wide tables and gentle lighting, packed close with artists, curators, dealers, gallery guys, smart-eyeglassed business tyros in three-piece suits, fat burghers eating Irish steak, French entrecote, Argentine beef.

There isn't much in the way of celebrity culture in Berlin, but Grill Royal serves those who make the grade on its wide boulevards and cobbled side streets: American film stars; Scandinavian novelists; Germany's political elite. Waiters swing past them on the double-quick, polyglot and efficient, bearing plates of enormous salads, briny oysters, steaks and steaks and yet more steaks, the occasional grilled dorade.

Glass-backed, fluorescent-lighted refrigerators flank the open kitchen, offering diners a view of real-life Damien Hirst: large fish piled high beside giant crab legs; fillets of beef hanging in the cold, still air, beside the tools used to break them down. The food is excellent. Start with Fine de Claire oysters from the murky, green pools of Marennes-Oléron in western France, along the Bay of Biscay - medium-size, sweet, a little nutty, cold. Try a bibb salad the size of an upside-down hat, bathed in soft and creamy vinaigrette.

Behold those plates of grassy, tender meat, crust-grilled and served beside a piquant steak sauce, with toothsome roasted baby potatoes with rosemary on the side, a dish of plain steamed spinach, another of sweetly turned coins of carrot.

To drink? A waiter brought a 2000 Château du Beau Vallon from St.-Emilion - a fat Bordeaux happy to be in Germany entertaining Americans. It did more than nicely.

"

The Basics: Friedrichstrasse 105b, 10117 Berlin-Mitte (Friedrichstrasse)

URL: Grill Royal

Accessible?

Child-Friendliness?

Related Tours/Sites:
Friedrichstadt Palast , Kalkscheune
Could be integrated with the Jewish Berlin Tour and with customised Berlin tours

Nearby Hotels/Accommodation:

4 ****
Artist Riverside Hotel & Spa
Hotel Melia Berlin

3 ***
Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-HotelHotel Albrechtshof
Hotel Allegra

2 **
Hotel Amelie Berlin

Hostels:
baxpax downtown Hostel Hotel