Place with a View: Cafe Botanico, Berlin

In this category, I will introduce you to places that offer special perspectives on good food and its culture. This August, I am taking you on a journey to a secret garden.

“Never trust a garden without weeds,” it says at the entrance to the garden. But once you’ve passed through the gate, both garden and weeds disappear. And you wonder if you are still in Berlin – or in any city at all. The walls of the surrounding houses seem to float back and merge into the scene like the ruins of a lost civilization.

Fruit trees tower to the sky. Below them, grape vines creep over aged wooden carcasses. Old roses and huge raspberry bushes with iridescent fruits frame a patchwork of small plots with vegetables and herbs more or less in a row. Villages of cultivation in an opulent and untamed micro-landscape of herbs and flowers. In between are lonely chairs and hidden tool sheds, apparently left over from the last expedition of some intrepid explorer crew. It is a small jungle. A rather charming one, where only bees and wasps wear tiger stripes. And instead of a mighty jungle river, there is a small pond in one corner where the mother of all mints grows.

“It will be an organic garden in the backyard of the old store. Which will be turned into a cafe. The garden will provide some of the food for the cafe.” That was our first notion of Cafe Botanico. Friends of ours who knew the owner’s family personally had mentioned it. A bold project, even in an area like Rixdorf, which has a very dynamic gastronomic scene. We had experienced this first hand, as we lived in Rixdorf at the time.

Still, it sounded very intriguing, so soon after it opened in 2013, we went to take a look. It was quiet at first, so you could talk to the people who built the place. We met Martin and Stefano, his “Roman father-in-law,” as he calls him. Who happens to be a renowned chef from the Italian capital. But you could tell right away that there was genuine devotion behind the idea from the beginning. A love of good food, respect for all that grows and a passion to create something unique.

These days, you should reserve a table in advance to eat and drink at Cafe Botanico. The food is ever excellent, tastes surprisingly real and always brings a smile to your face. Because the dishes themselves look like a garden. You can eat them in the garden cafe – inside or outside, where you can choose from a number of pretty niches and lovingly decorated places.

So when all the chairs are taken and the tables are full of delicacies, many of which come from that little secret place in the back, all becomes one. And you can just imagine Alexander von Humboldt and Ernst Haeckel sitting at a table under that big tree in the center, discussing the shape(s) of nature.

And you wonder if you are still in Berlin – or in any city at all.

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Side Notes:

• I went on a garden tour. And was totally inspired. If you want to see the garden, join one of the monthly guided tours with Martin. More details as usual on the [InfoByteSized] page under P like ‘Place with a View’ and ‘Botanico’.
• Rixdorf is the historic center of Neukölln, one of the largest districts in Berlin. It has a cobblestone street, horse stables and milk houses in the back, and a blacksmith’s shop on the small marketplace. Like a village in the city.