Soho House Berlin.
Text: Jens Hoffmann
Soho House is a hotel and a kind of a private members club with 40 bedrooms. Set over eight floors of a restored Bauhaus building in the Mitte district, Soho House Berlin includes a Spa and gym, a rooftop pool, restaurants, bars, a screening room and a private dining area as well as a few bedrooms.
The Soho Berlin is the Group’s first outside-UK European property and its largest so far.
The hotel rooms offer the typical upscale fare: custom beds, rainforest showers, Samsung flatscreens and in-house Cowshed spa products.
I like them, really nice.
Some rooms have restored vintage record players and vinyl LPs to evoke a retro industrial feel also reinforced by exposed concrete and dark paneling.
The hotel rooms are a delightfully subtle mix of this hard, angular visual language with a padded-velvet lush and prissy 1930s glamour.
The cool interiors are the work of in-house designer Susie Atkinson and London-based Michaelis Boyd Associates.
Inside you will find a nice restaurant and bar.
Soho House Group operates six Soho House clubs and hotels in the UK and one in each of New York, West Hollywood, Berlin.
History: Opened in 1928 as a department store, the property was seized by the wartime government before being occupied by the post-war, Communist regime until 1956.
It was then used or better misused to house the Communist Party archives and the Central Committee’s Historical Institution of the DDR.
After German reunification in 1989 the building was returned to its original owners.
Berlin is back.
Must do’s in Berlin: Liquidrom – an fantastic spa.
Liquidrom in “Möckernstraße 10”.
Berlin enjoys glorious summer and Berliners certainly make the most of it. Although hundreds of miles from any coastline, you’ll find sun-seeking improvisation on every corner. Fortunately, in the winter the area is transformed into an indoor complex with a sauna in riposte to the bitter weather.
Unfortunately my favourite restaurant in Berlin-Mitte closed:
It was the Margaux – Chef de Cuisine – Michael Hoffmann
New resto tips in the hotel:
#1: Volt in Kreuzberg:
On the day of our visit, Restaurant Volt was serving a five-course diner before.
Nice Amuse-gueule, black pudding ravioli with pumpkin and pickled radish. Seared scallops with pearl barley risotto and porcini mushroom, German Ribeye steak with leeks, malt and aronia berries, Apricot, almond and thyme.
Each course that arrived at our tables was prepared with exceptional precision and attention to detail, showcasing the chef’s delicate touch and talent for photogenic plating. The flavours were distinct and identifiable, and nearly every dish was fabulous – the pearl barley risotto was a touch too salty for my liking, but that’s really a minor blemish to an otherwise wonderful dinner.
If you looking for a nice dinner venue with an atypical interior, great food and lovely service Restaurant Volt has to be in that shortlist.
LABANCA, a bit of “stylish bella Italia” in Berlin-City.
The new restaurant by Chef de Cuisine Jörg Behrend is located in the groundfloor of Hotel de Rome. The dining room is just cool. Tables are generously spaced, set with good quality linen tablecloths. The kitchen is well staffed. We tried during the opening the whole menu, eight small courses of tasting menus, including vitello tonnato, Watermelon with thunfish, caprese, Gnocci with Parma ham, Saltimbocc with spinacah, seebass. Everything was perfect, most of the vegetables on the menu came from local gardens.
The wine list has coverages from France, Germany, Italy and Spain in particular, with some rare wines as well. We tried Chardonnay by Alois Lageder South-Tyrol and a lovely Riesling from Anthony Hammond, Rheingau.
This worked well with the food, the textural contrast of the different kind of foods was delicious effective and everything tasted very fresh.
The food was attractively presented and also the Barbecue meat had a pleasant meaty taste, but the itself had a slight chewiness of texture, which I was not expecting. The vegetables had excellent flavour.
The seabass with artichokes, was an unusual dish, tasty and well balanced.
Dessert came in three stages. Classic Pannacotta, Tirami Su and a lovely chocolate bar.
A restaurant that can produce genuinely top class dishes, and the control of balancing flavors was impressive. Yummy.
Sir Rocco Forte (with his daughters) joined the opening.
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