Dining in Berlin

In a city with people from 183 countries, you can make a gourmet trip around the world in just 24 hours. Cuisine is one of the few areas where Berlin is on par with the other European capitals--yet it’s much cheaper here to enjoy refined international or ethnic dining.

Two of the best restaurants in town, both inviting for business lunches or dinners, are the Michelin-starred eateries Facil (Potsdamer Strasse 3, tel. 030 59 005 12 34) and Hugo’s (Budapester Strasse 2, tel. 030 26 02 12 63). Facil, set in an impressive, Italian marble-clad dining hall with an open roof and an adjacent Japanese garden, serves French and Nouvelle German cuisine. Hugo’s (at the InterContinental) offers a magnificent view of the skyline, and you can even enjoy dinner in your private dining room and savor the fine German and Berlin cuisine: The regional kitchen, once disparaged for its heavy and rather unimaginative cooking, has experienced a revival in recent years. Young chefs like Hugo’s Thomas Kammeier know how to prepare the best local dishes-freshwater fish like pan-fried trout or pike-perch, wild boar, veal or pork liver with fried onions, apples and mashed potatoes, oven-roasted duck with an apple-raisin filling-true to their original recipes, but refined with lighter nuances and choice vegetables.

Other top restaurants in the eastern downtown area, hip and blessed with a high celebrity factor, but perfect for business meetings, are Bocca di Bacco (Friedrich Strasse 167-168, tel. 030 20 67 28 28), one of the city’s prime Italian places serving delicious Tuscan cooking; buzzing Borchardt (Französische Strasse 47, tel. 030 203 87 110), set in a breathtaking historic dining hall and serving traditional French Brasserie cuisine; and the Käfer im Reichstag (Platz der Republik, tel. 030 22 62 99 33), next to the cupola on the historic parliament building, where the traditional German food is just fine and the view is fabulous.

The hipper dining scene hovers around the nightlife quarters of Scheunenviertel and Hackescher Markt in the Mitte district, where many ethnic budget restaurants--from the Spanish tapas bar Yosoy to the Jewish Café Oren and the Turkish Hasir--attract a mixed crowd of locals and tourists alike.

In the western downtown, private upscale restaurants like Lubitsch, Bovril, Café Einstein and others can be found in the side streets of the Kurfürstendamm Boulevard.

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