BERLIN — This cosmopolitan city of 3.4 million inhabitants prides itself on its dazzling array of restaurants and cafes, but there is no other restaurant in Berlin quite like Bleibergs.
Manuela Hoffmann in her restaurant. [Sheldon Kirshner photos]
A small, cozy, casual place found at 45A Nurnbergerstrasse, Bleibergs is Berlin’s one and only certifiably kosher vegetarian restaurant, according to its co-proprietor, Manuela Hoffmann.
Centrally located, and within easy walking or subway distance of some of Berlin’s major tourist attractions, Bleibergs – which is under the supervision of the Berlin rabbinate’s Rabbi Yitzhak Ehrenberg – definitely fills a need when hunger pangs strtike.
The menu features an eclectic selection of European and Israeli-style food: mixed salads, sandwiches, hummus, gefilte fish, latkes, pizzas, spaghetti, soups, tofu and vegetarian burgers and sausages, as well as sweets and pastries.
During the summer season, Bleibergs is open for business from Sunday to Thursday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
On Fridays, it is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays.
I dropped in for lunch and ordered a vegetable soup and cheese blintzes, both of which were satisfying.
For dessert, I chose a delicious poppy seed cake, washed down with an aromatic cappuccino.
Bleibergs specializes in vegetarian kosher food.
Hoffmann, whose partner is her retired husband Michael, opened Bleibergs five years ago.
“I filled a niche,” she said. “There was not a kosher vegetarian, dairy, fish restaurant in the city.”
Although foreign visitors comprise much of its clientele, Bleibergs is also frequented by local Germans with a yen for Jewish food.
She depends on her non-Jewish customers. “There are simply not enough Jewish people in Berlin who insist on eating kosher,” she explained.
Surprisingly, Hoffmann’s chef is Mongolian. “We told her what we have to look for, and today she’s almost perfect.”
Hoffmann’s first chef was an Israeli, but he didn’t last long.
Bleibergs offers kabbalat Shabbat evenings every two weeks.
Hoffmann, a travel agent on the side, runs a bed-and-breakfast operation on the premises. The three non-smoking guest rooms are accessible by elevator.
Bleibergs – which is adjacent to a Turkish restaurant and practically next door to the Augsburgerstrasse subway station – is close to Kufurstendamm, a major boulevard dotted with upscale shops and cafes, and the Jewish community centre at 79-80 Fasanenstrasse.
It is also near KaDeWe, a large, elegant department store whose sixth floor food department is easily one of the finest in Europe.
By subway, Bleibergs is a short subway ride away from the Jewish Museum, which traces German-Jewish history from Roman times to the present, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which commemorates the Holocaust.
Hoffmann, 55, was born and raised in Berlin. She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Breslau, which was part of Germany before World War II.
With the 1945 Potsdam agreement, Breslau, in Lower Silesia, was ceded to Poland, and today is known as Wroclaw.
As might be expected, Bleibergs is not the only kosher restaurant in Berlin, whose registered Jewish population is estimated to be 15,000.
Beth Cafe, under the supervision of the Orthodox Adass Jisroel Synagogue, is on 40 Tucholskystrasse, while Plaetzl Imbiss, which like Bleibergs is under the supervision of Rabbi Ehrenberg, is at 4 Passauerstrasse.
Gabriel’s, inside the Jewish community centre, the site of a synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht in November 1938, is also under the supervision of Rabbi Ehrenberg.
Fairly close by is the refurbished golden-domed New Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse.
Now a museum devoted to Jewish history, the shul was inaugurated in 1866. With a seating capacity of 3,200, it was Germany’s largest shul.
Desecrated on Kristallnacht and accidentally bombed by Allied aircraft during the war, it was a brooding ruin until it was rescued from oblivion.
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Bleibergs e-mail address is [email protected].
The Crowne Plaza Hotel, at 65 Nurnburgerstrasse, is about five minutes by foot from Belibergs.
For more information about Berlin, contact the German National Tourist Office in Toronto at 416-968-1685. www.cometogermany.com.
The Berlin Tourism Marketing office in North America can be reached by calling 818-385-0631.
Lufthansa German Airlines has direct flights to Germany from Canada.