Where To Eat
“The point isn’t to be a vegan restaurant, it’s to be a very good restaurant” says Ilhami Terzi, the charming Turkish-German owner of Kopps. The dishes that stunned me was pumpkin-seed crusted kohlrabi on a bed of pearl barley cooked with red wine and garnished with truffled black salsify. Be sure to order a glass of wine from the all-organic list of mostly German vintages.
Linienstrasse 94, Berlin; kopps-berlin.de
Lucky Leek is gourmet vegan restaurant in the hip Prenzlauerberg district, where it was founded three years ago by a team that originally trained at La Mano Verde. The kitchen has since won a serious reputation for dishes like mushrooms stuffed with smoked sweet potato and green-pea-and-nori filet with horseradish, caper vinaigrette, and a braised cucumber mash.
Kollwitzstrasse 54, Berlin; lucky-leek.de
At La Mano Verde, Jean-Christian Jury, a French chef who set up shop in Berlin in 2011 after cooking in London and living in some 32 other countries, presides over some of the most fashionable tables in Berlin for vegans and omnivores alike. Two of Jury’s most popular signature dishes are spaghetti de la mer, gluten-free rice-flour spaghetti cooked with wakame and Passe-Pierre seaweed, sundried tomatoes, and sesame, chili, and coriander-garlic oil; and a decadent plum-and-walnut cheesecake, where a custardy base of coconut oil and cashews replaces the usual dairy component of the dessert.
Uhlandstrasse 181-183, Berlin; lamanoverdeberlin.com
Berlin’s headliner vegan chef, Bjorn Moschinski, has been vegan since he was 15. At his new restaurant Mio Matto in the trendy Friedrichshain district of Berlin, he offers dishes like a soup of “duck” (astonishingly luscious textured soy protein), red cabbage and orange with a toasty sesame seed garnish.
Warschauerstrasse 33, Berlin; miomatto.de
Occupying the former premises of an Irish pub, this all-vegan fair-trade organic produce restaurant is run by chef Steffen Weigel, who formerly worked at La Mano Verde. Viasko’s menu changes regularly but runs to dish like fennel bulb risotto with preserved tomatoes and pepper stuffed with rice, mushrooms and soy protein with rosemary potatoes and herb cream.
Erkelenzdamm 49, Berlin; viasko.de
Where To Stay
The Almodovar Hotel is afriendly, well-designed newly built sixty-room stay in the trendy Friedrichshain district. It’s also 100 percent organic and environmentally sustainable. The hotel’s Bardot restaurant serves an organic vegetarian menu. Bed linens and other textiles used at the hotel are made from organically farmed fibers, all cleaning products at the hotel are organic, and recycled and recyclable materials are used whenever possible. Bicycle rentals are available on site, and there’s also a small spa, including a sauna with views of the city. Boxhagener Strasse 83, Berlin; almodovarhotel.de