So you want brunch, but you also need to accommodate your friends with dietary restrictions? Enter Berlin’s best new brunch destination: Wanda. The Kreuzberg pop-up, set to run for six months, is the brainchild of friends Marion Klammer and Moritz Schwenk.
A guiding light for the pair is their self-coined acronym ADAB: All Diets Are Beautiful. That means Wanda is all about serving food for everyone. “It’s a place where everyone can feel welcome and doesn’t feel limited, since it’s a menu where anyone can eat everything,” says Klammer.
In practice, that means a menu that’s entirely vegan, gluten-free, and, at the same time, seriously delicious. This culinary feat is thanks to Klammer and Schwenk’s backgrounds. The duo met basically around the corner from Wanda, while working at two-Michelin-starred restaurant Horváth, which is known for its out-of-the-box vegetable dishes.
We don’t want to just have [vegan] fast food, nor to have the typical vegan options where it’s just all super healthy.
Klammer also brings experience from the famed industrial-yet-fancy vegetarian and vegan institution Cookies Cream. Suffering from coeliac disease, it’s a relief for Klammer to work in a kitchen, where she can actually taste everything she’s cooking. “People often talk about it as a trend or a lifestyle choice, without taking you seriously… or they acknowledge it and then they ask me ‘You want to have a beer?’,” she says. The duo also bring skills from their fine dining backgrounds in Austria (for Schwenk) and South Tyrol (for Klammer). “In the fine dining world, you learn a lot of tricks – how to make things tasty without using animal products,” says Schwenk.
Klammer and Schwenk’s vegetable-centric fine dining experience has led them to approach dishes differently, skipping the traditional idea of one plate being the “main character” (usually a piece of meat or fish). “You have to approach the goal in other ways. So, you use colours, textures, warm and cold elements. And if you mix this all together well, then it’s a finished plate,” Schwenk says.
That’s the approach at Wanda, although it’s undoubtedly far more casual than its owners’ previous workplaces, with main dishes ranging from around €12 to €18. That’s by design, with Klammer and Schwenk noting that fine dining is often out of reach for the average Berliner, now more than ever.
The menu, the pair tease, will change regularly (Schwenk professes that he gets bored after a week cooking the same things), allowing the kitchen to showcase seasonal produce in its best light. This could mean dishes like summery pumpkin in an unctuous curry, with some zing in the form of orange slices and cashew-based feta. There’s also a smørrebrød (a Danish open sandwich, done at Wanda with hearty wheat-free bread instead of the classic rye) topped with a kohlrabi slaw that’s deceptively creamy for a dish with no egg or dairy, and fermented veggies (tangy fermented ingredients are a speciality here).
While these dishes might be off the menu by the time you read this, one you’ll likely encounter is ‘Chicken 5000’, an homage to iconic breakfast haunt Frühstuck 3000. Naturally, it’s vegan, so oyster mushrooms – a fungus that’s surprisingly meaty – take the place of chicken. It’s a perfect balance of spiced, shatteringly crisp coating with just the right grease level, plus a little kick from a chilli dipping sauce (and an umami koji sauce, depending on how you order it).
The menu is small yet boasts formidable range
Those with a sweet tooth are looked after, too. Wanda’s French toast is proof that you can make light, fluffy bread without wheat flour. This cloudlike brioche is made with a rice and corn-based bread, with a restrained sugar crust, and silky ice cream and berry compote.
The menu is small yet boasts formidable range – so you can drag along your hungover party pals and Sunday morning jogging freaks alike. “We don’t want to just have [vegan] fast food, nor to have the typical vegan options where it’s just all super healthy,” says Klammer. That extends to the drinks, too: you can play it healthy with house-made kombucha, or continue last night’s party with an intriguing herb-spiked bergamot spritz (among other options), and coffee from Berliner Kaffeerösterei.
While Wanda is cool-and-casual daytime affair, there’s a hint of fine dining to its space: Klammer and Schwenk wrangled the former dining room of fine dining destination Lode & Stijn, which closed at the end of 2023, complete with the former restaurant’s eye-catching green banquettes, modernist light fixtures and sleek designer ceramics. They’ve spiced it up with their own decor (check out the artwork that mixes “sex” and “brunch” in an outré way).
And since it’s a summer pop-up, there’s outdoor seating. You’ll be able to visit Wanda until November, when the lease is up, but don’t dally: the owners can’t guarantee that Wanda will continue past that date. Our recommendation? Do as Klammer does: “I try to focus on the moment and to live it and to enjoy it now.”
- Wanda, Lausitzer Str. 25, Kreuzberg, details.
