Anyone who’s ever grilled or lit a campfire knows the feeling of waiting for the flames to catch. The spark doesn’t always ignite right away.
That’s also the story behind a restaurant that should have opened two or three years ago. Back in 2020, Jeff Claudio and Jessica Tan launched a pop-up called Stoke inside Dylan Watson-Brawn’s restaurant Ernst at Nettelbeckplatz.
Claudio, a Canadian chef with Filipino roots, had just arrived in Berlin from Burnt Ends in Singapore. His vision felt fresh: fine dining reimagined as something more rustic and elemental. Above all, it was radically ingredient-driven. Fire cooking, served along a long, L-shaped counter facing a custom-made Binchotan charcoal grill imported from Japan.
Everyone eats chicken all the time – and yet most people have no idea how different it can really taste.
But then, Berlin happened. Building a fire kitchen inside a turn-of-the-century office building would be difficult at the best of times, especially in one of the first in the city made with modern steel and concrete and, on their first attempt, the larger grill with its complex exhaust system didn’t pass inspection.
But now, Stoke has finally opened in that very space. The restaurant serves a rotating yakitori menu (€75), each night built around a single theme: a series of yakitori and kushiyaki skewers grilled over the Binchotan fire. Each small course is pared down to just one, two, maybe three elements. When we attended, the opener was a standout: chicken liver pâté on toast baked in a Neapolitan wood-fired oven. Another highlight that bridges comfort food and culinary finesse: Jeff Claudio’s take on the Berliner boulette (with chicken), paired with a barely cooked egg yolk and a richly aromatic broth.
Guests can expand the thoughtfully curated menu with a few adventurous add-ons. Yakitori skewers might include heart, liver, or – for the bold – gizzard. There’s also a hamachi made from yellowfin tuna, and always a pork or beef option. On this evening, it’s short ribs – not grilled, but baked into a savory pie. These are always special cuts from carefully sourced animals.
Which brings us to product quality – a central tenet of Japanese cuisine. Since free-range chicken of excellent quality is increasingly available in Germany, Jeff Claudio looked to producers like Lars Odefey from the Lüneburg Heath, who raises heritage French breeds and supplies top Berlin restaurants like Nobelhart & Schmutzig. Still, Claudio says, these chickens are only partially suited to yakitori – the demanding art of serving a single bird across up to 30 different cuts and preparations.
Casual excellence in hospitality at Stoke
Jeff Claudio finally found what he was looking for in Styria, thanks to a tip from Lukas Mraz of Vienna’s Mraz & Sohn: Bresse chickens raised in expansive free-range conditions and allowed to age for several months. In fact, Claudio says he’d love to experiment with meat from truly old animals – something that’s long been common with beef, for example. He also stresses that the butchering – the specific cuts – is an integral part of the cooking itself.
“Everyone eats chicken all the time – and yet most people have no idea how different it can really taste.”
That experience alone – of truly tasting chicken in a new way – is reason enough to visit Stoke. So is the casually excellent hospitality: warm but never pushy, lively but never rushed. The dining room strikes the same balance – spacious and open, yet intimate, furnished with a few precisely chosen materials.
But what really makes Stoke special is the team. There’s Jeff Claudio, of course, and his business partner and host, Jessica Tan, formerly of Copenhagen’s celebrated (and now closed) Relæ. Sommelier Sophia Fenger, previously at Barra and most recently Coda, brings a knack for reading the room and fostering unpretentious, table-side conversation. And bar manager Adam Tudoret – also from Coda – pours understated, elegant highballs and a Fürst Wiacek Pils from Siemensstadt with such ease and style, you could almost believe you’re in a Tokyo bar.
- Stoke, Lindenstraße 34–35 (entrance on Feilnerstraße), Kreuzberg, Wed–Sat 6–11 pm, details.
This article was adapted from German. See the original here.
