The Berlin diners making a case for cosmopolitan flavours

The diner is the final word popular culture motif: a impartial no-man’s-land for dialogue between households, pals, lovers and enemies. Its inside uniform of repeating limited-session seating and endearingly predictable menus has punctuated movie and tv units alike for many years: from the long-lasting, orgasmic screenwriting of Norah Ephron and the enigmatic, Journey-soundtracked closing scene of The Sopranos, to the refined symbolism of repeat rendezvous on the Midnight Express in Kar-wai’s breakthrough film Chungking Express. With every wipe-down of a desk or countertop comes the prospect to inform a brand-new story.

The cross-cultural attain of the Berlin diner

In Germany, where the diner culture ingrained in North America and other European countries has long been usurped by unpretentious curbside snack stands and the smoky back rooms of Kneipen (a form of pub or tavern known for its popularity with residents of the former German Democratic Republic), a new assimilation of international lifestyle habits is emerging in the country’s capital, Berlin, in the form of a string of restaurant openings that borrow their food, interior and menu concepts, to varying degrees of abstraction, from diner-style venues around the world.

A testament to the cultural richness fostered by growing multiculturalism, the visual and culinary codes of North American, Southeast Asian and European diners, delis and cafeterias are deconstructed, simmered and distilled to their essence at Onette, one in every of Berlin’s most talked-about 2025 openings. Founded by restaurant business veterans Tamara Siedentopf and Brienne West, and designed by London and Berlin-based structure observe Studio Bates Rai, the Schöneberg eatery-cum-wine bar is a sanctuary of sunshine, with sunshine cascading by giant home windows over a painstakingly proportioned inside of similar cubicles and bar stools.

As architect and Studio Bates Rai co-founder Thomas Bates explains, the idea and design strategy for this new foodie hotspot is anchored in an evocative use of supplies and a rigorously cultivated ambiguity – one which invitations company to undertaking their very own expectations and interpretations onto the house, free from the affect of visible clichés. He explains, ‘The danger of designing diners is that you can fall into a pastiche position, with red upholstered seats and chrome everywhere. We were really conscious that we didn’t need to try this.’ By breaking down the fabric and spatial DNA of those long-held aesthetic stereotypes, Onette’s architects – who’re additionally liable for the design of London’s new favorite ice cream and wine spot The Dreamery – had been in a position to ship one thing model new that also manages to resonate with these acquainted with the basic format.

‘It’s concerning the degree of consolation, the scale of the desk, and that form of intimacy,’ says Bates. ‘We looked at very different geographical diners – Southeast Asian, British, American – because there’s widespread floor between all of them, however they’re truly fairly totally different. Taking that breadth of concepts provides you the house to make one thing that may really feel new and up to date.’ Vintage pendant lamps from California illuminate every brilliant white sales space desk, whereas vintage café curtains, sourced from Lithuania, accent the bespoke furnishings and central bar space with an ode to the town’s historic Eastern European influences.

While the crew behind Onette’s abstraction of aesthetic codes has consciously veered away from prescriptive concepts of what a diner must be, chef Arianna Plevisani leaned into cinematic motifs whereas self-designing her new, and already much-loved, Kreuzberg restaurant, Ari’s, the place purple banquet seating and an open kitchen function an unstated invitation to assemble with out the pressures of ritual.

Originally from Peru, and having lived and labored in New York City earlier than shifting to Berlin 14 years in the past, Plevisani as soon as dreamt of a profession in filmmaking. Exploring her love of the diner as a cultural idea, she explains, ‘I think the idea of the diner as this setting for life was really imprinted in my brain. I joke that Ari’s is a Peruvian sandwich store hidden in a diner. But it’s not likely a joke. I simply suppose that the diner is a good vessel for any type of immigrant delicacies, and at all times has been.’

While she has collaborated with buddy and artist Laura Schusinski to refine her imaginative and prescient, in addition to enlisting the abilities of native carpenter Rainer Spehl, Ari’s was born of Plevisani’s personal fantasy and is rife with artefacts of her ardour, akin to wall lights handmade by her and a kitchen configured to her particular working beliefs. ‘I opened the restaurant that I wish existed,’ she says. ‘From my love of movies. From the food that I want to eat on a daily basis.’

Onette and Ari’s are the newest names to interrupt into the rising Berlin diner scene, and each seize the synergy of tradition, customized and group, but it surely was Dashi that laid its foundations. A bodily manifestation of the friendship that connects co-founders Thu Thuy Pham and Phuong Thao Westphal, Dashi diner’s first location – opened in 2022, within the Mitte district of Berlin – celebrates the Japanese culinary idea of ‘yōshoku’, whereby Western dishes are infused with notable Japanese flavours. For the 2 restaurateurs, who share a Vietnamese-German background, constructing a menu throughout the internationally translated diner format has allowed them to play with each Eastern and Western meals influences, with out the strain of so-called ‘authenticity’.

The duo clarify, ‘As Vietnamese-born women living in Germany, our personalities, experiences and tastes exist in a cross-section of Western and Eastern food and culture. Inspired by Western-style cafés in Asia, our menu and aesthetic evoke a certain nostalgia and provide an escape from everyday stresses while simultaneously opening conversations around food, looking toward the past, present and future.’

Having kick-started the German capital’s newfound love of diner-style eating, Dashi launched a second location, in Charlottenberg, in 2024 – only a few months earlier than restaurateur Shabnam Syed opened the doorways to Neukölln’s Desi Diner.

Located on the banks of one of many metropolis’s well-known canals, Syed’s virtually psychedelic, pastel-hued group hub embraces the codes of the basic diner whereas reimagining it by her personal cultural lens. Honing in on the tactile nuance of diner-design DNA, she explains, ‘For me, a diner isn’t actually a diner with no menu board. That concept turned the point of interest of the house: I labored with my model designer, Rocketfuelled, on the lettering and general identification, and collaborated with the commercial design studio Überdruck3D, who constructed and fabricated the piece. It’s a nod to nostalgia, however reimagined by my perspective, with South Asian influences and Berlin’s up to date power’.

With greater than three many years of reunification beneath its belt and an more and more culturally various inhabitants, the gusto with which Berlin’s new up to date diner scene has discovered reputation signifies a voracious urge for food for world culinary influences, and the communal areas the place folks from all corners of the town and world can congregate and revel in them. In the shadow of a political panorama that’s more and more sowing the seeds of division, kitchens all through the capital are rising as areas the place cross-cultural conviviality holds the ability to carry folks collectively.