Berlin - KaDeWe Food Emporium

OK, calling it a food emporium doesn't do it justice. KaDeWe's 6th Foor deli (which is short for Kaufhaus des Westens - Department store of the West) is how most gourmands would picture the Afterlife to be like...... football fields of the best food the world has to offer.

Smoked salmon from Norway, thick double cream from Devon, Echire butter and fois gras from Paris but surprisingly no vegemite from Australia! In fact no products from Australia at all that I could find. Easy to miss though. KaDeWe boasts 34,000 different items, 3,4000 wines and 1300 types of cheese and an indecent array of sausages and wursts.

This one caugt my eye - it was studded with fresh green peppercorns

This is another German favourite - jellied or potted meats

The ham section alone was the size of the entire David Jones Food Hall in Sydney.

Fancy some pickled champignons?

or wild rabbit (in the foreground)

You haven't tasted chicken until you've had a roasted Bresse chicken from France

And then there were the fish and crustaecean bars

don't get on his bad side...

And how's this for a creature from the deep?

More varieties of olives than you knew existed

And stuffed marinated vegetables for a meze platter to blow your mind

And of course I couldn't go past a glass of bubbles at the champagne bar

Hanging out for some Thai I tried a beef stir-fry at KaDeWe's Asian stall.

  It was delicious but sadly a thinly disguised Chinese dish. The only Thai ingredient they used was fish sauce.

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The other 6 floors in the store aren't nearly as interesting as the food hall - just the usual cosmetics and designer wear that you could find anywhere in the world. KaDeWe had just gone into receivership when I visited. I hope it survives its financial woes. It would be sad for the 40,000 to 50,000 daily visitors to miss out on this truly unique experience.