One of the self-inflicted rules I have says that I may only willingly eat fish next to water in which fish lives. One of the flaws of this rule is that it does not require the fish to be from the same water that I am next to. It’s fine to eat sweet water fish next to a sea, for example.
The char (Saibling) that I saw on Schuler’s menu can be found in Weissensee, though of course there is no guarantee that the restaurant uses fresh catch. Still, I had no reason not to take it, but then I noticed the ribs and all my rules went out of the window. The sad thing is, I was not even especially hungry and I knew that I would have a potentially heavy dinner at my hotel four hours later. But the curiosity won, even though while waiting for the ribs I was secretly hoping the portion would be small.
I was happy to see only one rack brought to me, but soon it became apparent that I was going to get very full; the ribs were hidden below at least a centimeter and a half of meat, which actually completely covered the bones on one side of the rack. While the meat was not fat – I would even say a bit too dry – it was heavy, tasting like pork loin. I don’t think it had been marinated much, for most of the flavor came from the honey-based topping and especially the spicy sauce.
The sauce was the most original and enjoyable feature of the dish. The potato wedges had unfortunately been over-roasted, many of them having turned into dry crunchy chips. And there was nothing else – no cabbage, no pepperoni, not even a leaf of salad to dilute the pigginess. The ribs were certainly edible and hungry people would appreciate their meatiness, but personally at the end I concluded that fish would have been a better idea. Or no food at all.
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