How Berlin is blazing a trail in zero-waste, sustainable food

Leaving Beba behind, I follow a fenced-off strip of the Berlin Wall past the site of the former Gestapo headquarters — today a memorial and museum. After circumnavigating a large group of tourists, I eventually emerge onto Oranienplatz, a wide, scruffy square that’s home to Ora, a restaurant and wine bar set in a Victorian building that once housed an apothecary. The original cornicing, dark-green leather banquettes and wooden cabinets filled with wine glasses and antique potion bottles lend the interior an elegant feel. Irish-born chef Alan Micks, who runs the kitchen both here and at the Michelberger Hotel’s restaurant a couple of miles east, tells me that at Ora they “source local when it feels right. Quality is number one, and local is not always the best”. 

Read more: Calla Henkel on Berlin’s ever-evolving späti scene

I scan the menu, a neatly printed, single A4 sheet of seasonal dishes and pre-lunch snacks. There’s a starter of zander crudo from the Baltic Sea, served in narrow, translucent strips with charred and pickled cucumbers and ragged-edged shiso leaves from the Michelberger’s own farm. “With our vegetarian food, we try to keep it hyperseasonal, and our aim is to have one ingredient from the farm on each plate,” says Alan. For my main, it’s slices of roasted, chargrilled pumpkin accompanied by puy lentils, their combined earthy, nutty sweetness offset by salty pecorino, a pumpkin-seed pesto and a handful of nubby, pickled chanterelles. Outside the window, Kreuzberg life unfolds: on the opposite side of Oranienplatz, a protest is in progress. Beyond, the huge stainless-steel ball of the Berlin TV Tower glints silver in the sunshine, its red-and-white antennae poking through passing wisps of cloud.

On my last morning in the German capital, I head for breakfast with cookbook writer and activist Sophia Hoffmann at plant-filled, tile-clad Isla Coffee Berlin, in Neukölln, whose shelves are lined with bottles of natural wine and cups made from recycled coffee grounds. A queue of Sunday-morning coffee-seekers has already begun to snake out the door. 

Over bowls of homemade granola with blackberries, fried sage leaves and yoghurt, we talk about how the city’s approach to food waste and produce 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,” she says. “This sort of thinking is more mainstream.” Along with her business partner, Nina Peterson, Sophia is planning to open her own certified-organic, low-waste, socially sustainable vegan restaurant, and doesn’t feel the need to prove either herself or her concept anymore. “People already understand they should consume fewer animal products,” she says. And if the rest of Berlin’s plant-based, low-waste experiences are anything to go by, she might well be on to a winner.