Berlin

Sustainability and culinary creativity are at the heart of the German capital’s most exciting restaurant experiences, from a contemporary Thai feast to herbs grown with cutting-edge technology.

- By Christie Dietz

With the end of my knife, I poke the plump, creamy orb of burrata idling before me in a red ring of fermented tomatoes and note, not unhappily, that I’m going to need some of Café Frieda’s freshly baked bread.

As I sponge up the last of my luxurious late lunch with a thick slice of sourdough while gazing out the window at a drizzly square in Prenzlauer Berg, owner Samina Raza whirls in through the door. Cheerfully sliding into a chair beside me, she offers coffee and a crumbly shortbread sandwich biscuit made with homemade chestnut miso and Franconian fig jam. Samina moved from London to Berlin to join her now-husband, Israeli chef Ben Zviel, whom she met in the queue for the toilets at the German capital’s infamous nightclub, Berghain. Together, they opened lively neighborhood restaurant Mrs Robinson’s; its vibrant little sister, Frieda, followed in the summer of 2021.