Like those strange chopper-style bicycles you see around Kotti sometimes, a big menu is an indication of insecurity. SuperSonico is anything but insecure.

Located on Bernauer Strasse and just beyond Mauerpark, the restaurant operates on a strange liminality, catering to the bourgies of Prenzlauer Berg but also within the orbit of Wedding’s culinary explorers.

The menu is near infallible – Italian cuisine featuring seven starters, five mains and one dessert, providing little time to deliberate and leaving you free to enjoy the ambiance rather than fret over your choice of meal. It’s a less-is-more approach that lesser venues would falter with, but which SuperSonico handles deftly.

For good reason – the food is superb. Although the restaurant is Italian, pizza and pasta are the last things you’ll find here. Rather, the concept is based around the idea of small dishes being served fast, using local produce and Italian flavours. It’s Italian fast food meets tapas without being cheap, invoking the air of Tuscan plains and Mediterranean beaches under the gloomy skies of Berlin.

Like any good meal should, the dining experience at SuperSonico began with hot bread, baked fresh on the premises and served with accompanying olive oil and vinegar. The only thing that kept us from devouring all of it was the mindful notion of saving space for the starters.

The first consisted of soft burrata served with tomato marmalade, crispy fennel and topped with mixed greens. What was to become a hallmark of every meal that we sampled, the burrata was dished beautifully, and looked as though it might have belonged on the table at some higher-end dining establishment further into Mitte. It was perfectly balanced, no one flavour overpowering another, but rather each complementing the next so that every bite was perfectly satisfying from taste to texture.

We moved on to grilled octopus, white bean puree and aubergine tapenade, garnished with dill. I’d never tried octopus before and I found it not only delicious, but superb in texture – beautifully crunchy on the outside without being chewy. As before, balance was the word that resounded here. The aubergine, bean puree and octopus went wonderfully together, and the portion was ideal, leaving ample room for mains without leaving you ravenous during the interim.

By the time our mains arrived I was ready to eat again. I’m always a little apprehensive of ordering fish in Berlin, but I decided to bite the bullet this time, ordering their grilled Adlerfish with artichokes and fennel. I was well-rewarded for the risk. The fish tasted fresh and was cooked perfectly, dispelling my prejudices against restaurants that cook seafood so far away from large bodies of salty water.

The last meal was braised ox cheeks. It came with two different kinds of parsnip and was swimming in thick and hearty broth. It was rich but not overly so, and was the ideal accompaniment to balance out the bitterness of the Aperol Spritzes we drank throughout the meal.

The food is hands down some of the best that I’ve had in Berlin, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for some next-level Italian. The location is prime, the decor is beautiful and the panoramic windows offer great views of the street as the M10 coasts by towards Waschauer Strasse. But you pay for it. At €14 – €18 for a main, the menu might be a tad expensive for the average Berliner.

That being said, if you’re willing to suck it up and burn the occasional hole in your pocket in the name of incredible food, SuperSonico is the place to do it.

Follow SuperSonico on Facebook here.

SuperSonico
Bernauer Str. 71/72
13355 Berlin