Leaving Beba behind, I follow a fenced strip of the Berlin Wall past the site of the former Gestapo headquarters, today a monument and museum. After turning around a large group of tourists, I finally head out onto Oranienplatz, a wide, scruffy square that is home to Ora, a restaurant and wine bar housed in a Victorian building that once housed an apothecary. Original cornices, dark green leather stools, and wooden cabinets filled with wine glasses and antique potion bottles add an elegant touch to the interior. Irish-born chef Alan Micks, who runs the kitchen both here and at the Michelberger hotel restaurant a couple of miles east, tells me that in Ora “they stock up on local produce when they feel good. Quality comes first, and local is not always the best ”.
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I scan the menu, a neatly printed A4 sheet of seasonal dishes and snacks before lunch. There’s a starter of raw walleye from the Baltic Sea, served in narrow, translucent strips with charred and pickled cucumbers and ragged-edged shiso leaves from Michelberger’s own farm. “With our vegetarian food, we try to keep it hypersemporal, and our goal is to have an ingredient from the farm on every plate,” says Alan. For my main course, it’s grilled pumpkin slices accompanied by puy lentils, their combined earthy and nutty sweetness offset by salty pecorino, a pumpkin seed pesto, and a handful of knotty, pickled chanterelles. Outside the window, Kreuzberg’s life unfolds: on the opposite side of Oranienplatz, a protest unfolds. Beyond, the huge stainless steel ball of the Berlin TV Tower glows silver in the sunlight, its red and white antennas peeking through the passing clouds.
On my last morning in the German capital, I head to breakfast with cookbook writer and activist Sophia Hoffmann at the plant-filled, tile-lined Isla Coffee Berlin in Neukölln, whose shelves are filled with bottles of natural wine and cups made from recycled coffee. gardens. A queue of coffee seekers on Sunday mornings has already started to walk out the door.
Over bowls of homemade granola with blackberries, fried sage leaves, and yogurt, we talked about how the city’s approach to food and produce waste has changed in recent years. Does Sophia think this is all part of a committed movement or a fleeting trend? “Since I published my first book in 2014, the conversation has changed,” he says. “This type of thinking is more common.” Along with her business partner, Nina Peterson, Sophia is planning to open her own certified organic, low-waste, socially sustainable vegan restaurant and no longer feels the need to prove herself or her concept. “People already understand that they should consume less animal products,” he says. And if the rest of Berlin’s plant-based, low-waste experiences are something to go through, it could very well be a winner.
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