Beirut Express – 9/10

With Big Bascha, my favourite place for a work lunch, closed for Ramadan, I’ve had to try some of the other Lebanese places nearby: luckily Beirut Express, just across the road, is also excellent and worth a visit for their delicious manaqish alone. It has a similar set-up to Big Bascha: order at the counter, …

Duo Sicilian Ice Cream – 8/10

Duo seems to be one of Berlin’s best-loved ice cream shops (@food_in_berlin is a huge fan), so when I had a Monday off work and found myself wandering around Kreuzberg in the sunshine, I had to try it. Their concept is all about real Sicilian gelato, although they don’t let themselves be too limited by …

Con Tho – 8/10

Con Tho is a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant opposite Hasenheide, serving neither particularly traditional Vietnamese food nor the standard pho-and-peanut-curry menu of German Vietnamese restaurants, but instead taking Vietnamese dishes and flavours as the jumping-off point for more modern and inventive dishes. It’s also – unlike just about every other restaurant I like – open on …

Nudelbude – 10/10

Nudelbude is a small, cosy, candlelit restaurant off Sonnenallee serving utterly delicious homemade pasta. You can choose from any of their sauces and one of three pasta shapes to put together your own bowl of comforting, carby goodness, or go for one of the daily specials (käsespätzle on Wednesday, gnocchi on weekends…) For handmade pasta, …

Alaska Bar – 10/10

Alaska is a tapas bar in Reuterkiez, with – ambitiously – an all-vegan menu, recreating everything from tortilla de patatas to aïoli and various types of cheese. They also have a lot of nice drinks and cocktails, and it feels, in a very Spanish way, much more like a bar with some food than a …

Futura Neapolitan Pizza – 8/10

Futura is a new pizza restaurant near Samariterstrasse, opened by a chef who used to work for Standard, widely considered one of the best pizza restaurants in Berlin. They are really trying to sell themselves on their artisan pizza and top quality ingredients - it’s the kind of place which appends DOP to every second …

Al Pasha – 8/10

I have very happy memories of the outrageous amounts of food I ate on a trip to Beirut in February, and luckily Berlin makes it quite easy to get a Lebanese food fix; Neukölln is the obvious place, but agreeably for me there are also plenty of options near my office in Moabit (Big Bascha …

Alverdes – 9/10

A two-course meal in a moderately fancy restaurant with huge windows and lovely views of the Kleiner Tiergarten park is quite a nice way to break up the day, so I’m lucky Alverdes is right next to my office. Even better, the weekday lunch menu is only €7.50, which given the quality and portion sizes …

Liu Chengdu Wei Dao – 7/10

Since opening late last year, Liu Chengdu Wei Dao has been all over Instagram, at least if you follow as many Berlin food bloggers as I do. To be honest, it made me not want to go there; there are a lot of interesting restaurants to try in Berlin and I think it’s quite boring …

Smokey Greens @ Daheim – 8/10

You wait ages for the Beyond Burger to come to Germany, then they all come at once: first Vincent Vegan, then the CBS Burgers & Wings pop-up, and now another pop-up in Daheim Manufaktur (the same venue that Burnin’ Noodles started out in before moving to Panda Noodle). Smokey Greens opened this week and will …