World Tour: Da Birdhouse Burger / Da Woiks Burger – The Bird, Berlin

The Bird is a burger institution in Berlin. If you do a Google search looking for the best burger in the city, it will most definitely be one of the first results that you come across. Prior to our visit, we were flooded with tweets, e-mails, Facebook messages and everyday reminders from friends and family who have visited the city, all telling us ‘you HAVE to go to the Bird”. We had always planned to go during our trip, but we actually chose to make it our first stop. Feeling pretty ravenous after a bumpy plane journey on an empty stomach, we dumped our bags at our hotel and set off for the Bird straight away.

Inside, the Bird gives off vibes of a cool, Brooklyn watering hole with it’s bare brick walls and low-hanging ceiling lights. It’s also advised that you book early as it’s almost always packed. We went on a Monday evening and people were being turned away at the door. Luckily, we had made our reservation just over a week prior to our trip.

As you can probably imagine, there’s a good selection of beer to be found at the Bird and we decided to order a couple of litre steins. We ordered our food at the same time and worked away at the beer slowly, so that we weren’t completely drunk by the time the burgers arrived!

The service at the Bird is incredibly friendly. The staff are more than happy to speak English or German to customers and will take time to answer any questions on the menu. At times, the staff did look a little rushed off their feet due to how busy it was (we’re guessing that carrying several litres of beer at a time gets quite tiring!), but they were always super-friendly and helpful.

The Bird’s menu consists of a wide selection of burgers, all with rather creative names and descriptions. The menu also makes a suggestion regarding how the burgers should be ordered and eaten: “PLEASE at least try to eat the damn burger with your hands. They’re not made to be eaten with a fork and knife. And for God’s sake, don’t order your meat well-done. You’ll end up ruining perfectly good beef”, the menu insists.

We opted for ‘Da Birdhouse’ burger as well as ‘Da Woiks’ burger, priced at 11.50 and 13 Euro.

‘Da Birdhouse’ burger (pictured above) was first up. This is the Bird’s standard house burger(!) and consists of two beef patties topped with American cheese, bacon, fried onions, ketchup, mustard, pickles and; according to the menu, ‘enough grease to kill a donkey‘.

Presentation-wise, both this burger and ‘Da Woiks’ burger looked jaw-dropping, but more in a ‘what the heck IS that and where’s my burger?‘ way. As soon as these burgers are put down in front of you, your first thought is going to be ‘how am I going to eat this?!‘

So how did it taste? Just from looking at the patties, you can tell that they’re handmade and bursting with juices. And they’re big too. Very big. In terms of taste, despite being packed with extra toppings, the beef remains the standout flavour here. It’s bold, very rich and so intensely beefy that I could smell it on my hands even after washing them several times. When we say that the beef here is juicy, we really mean it. Infact, after a few bites, everything else that’s sandwiched between the bun will be absolutely drenched in burger juice – ever had hamburger flavoured bacon? After a few bites of your burger at the Bird, you’ll be able to. The intensely flavourful beef, lashings of burger juice, gloopy American cheese, mustard and fried onions created a taste combination quite unlike any other that we’ve had in recent memory. This was so juicy and so messy that I almost felt wrong for eating it. It’s the type of burger that’ll make you fear for your health, but it’s also exactly what people flock to this busy restaurant to experience.

The beef was cooked to perfection. I had asked for my burger to be cooked medium-rare whereas Pamela had asked for hers to be cooked medium. When both arrived, there was a clear difference between the two and both had been cooked just as we’d requested.

Both ‘Da Birdhouse’ and ‘Da Woiks’ burgers were served on toasted English muffins, which was really my only issue with the Bird. Simply, I didn’t feel that the muffins worked well as a burger bun. I’d choose the muffin bun over the dreaded floury bun of doom any day; however, they weren’t big enough to hold all of the contents and did break apart quite easily. They were well toasted, but towards the end of my burger I was forced to commit the ultimate burger sin and use a fork to finish off what had fallen out on to my plate – exactly what the Bird asks customers not to do on their menu.

‘Da Woiks’ burger consisted of a beef patty topped with American cheese, bacon, onion and mushrooms. The patty was cooked medium as requested and much like our first burger, was incredibly juicy. The bacon was crisp and delicious and the mushrooms; which we weren’t sure about initially, actually complimented the rich beef very well. Much like the Birdhouse burger; however, the main issue here was with the muffin bun, which after a few bites was rendered irrelevant due to it being so small and, well….not a proper burger bun.

Each burger was served with delicious hand-cut fries, which were a mix of all different shapes and sizes and were nice and crispy. As you can see from the photographs, the portion sizes at the Bird are HUGE. If you can manage to finish the burger, you’ll likely struggle with all of the fries, especially if you also have a massive litre of beer to go along with it.

As you can probably tell, the burgers at the Bird are very messy. Be prepared to get your hands and face covered in meat juice, cheese, sauce and anything else that’s on your plate. Don’t worry; however, there’s full rolls of paper towels on each table to help you clean up.

The Bird; for the most part, was great. Super-friendly staff, great beer and some of the tastiest beef you’re ever likely to have make it easily worth a visit. If they were to ditch the toasted muffin and replace it with a decent burger bun, I’d probably vote for this as the best all-round burger in Berlin, without any doubt.

Price: 11 – 13 Euro per burger

SUMMARY
+ Incredibly juicy patties.
+ Full of flavour.
+ Huge portions.
+ Cool location & atmosphere.
+ Cooked perfectly.
– Bun was poor.

Have you tried this burger? Did you love it? If so, let us know!

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The Bird
Am Falkplatz 5
10437 Berlin
Website: http://www.thebirdberlin.com/
Telephone: +49 30 51053283