Rogacki

A trip to Rogacki is like stepping back in time: beaming attendants in green, monogrammed uniforms stand to attention behind row after row of sparkling vitrines stuffed with all manner of prepared produce. The Rogacki store was founded in 1928 in Wedding, where current owner Dietmar Rogacki’s grandfather would pull his cart of smoked fish to the Alexanderplatz market. He moved to the current location near Bismarckstrasse in 1932 when he was offered an old open-air steel foundry. Converting it into a smokery, the shop added a cured meat section, pickled fish and eventually, in the 1960s, a roof, completing today’s grand façade. The smoked and pickled fish is their mainstay, specialties include Bratherings (fried and brined herring), Rollmops (pickled herrings rolled around gherkin) and Senfgurken (white gherkins from Spreewald). Smoked eels, whole and filleted, entire salmons, hot and cold smoked under a variety of woods line the display and an overflowing tray of miniature Kiel sprats encased in their golden foil-like skin appear almost as gift chocolates. Best though, are the multitude of standing tables dotted around, where burly Charlottenburg labourers rub shoulders with blue-rinsed West Berlin mesdames at lunch-time, hunched over steaming plates of Blutwurst (blood sausage) with mash and sauerkraut or Schweinhaxe (roast pork knuckle) with one of the store’s assorted potato salads. The reasonably priced produce is made with loving care, and the place is a charming shrine to a way of German life oft-forgotten in today’s Berlin.