• 5
• All-Round Loveliness in the heart of Moabit

Few tourists venture into the heartlands of Moabit which is their loss as it has plenty of interest, not to mention some fine places to eat and drink. By good fortune the local community were staging a gala event during our visit and this made it a fun place to be. Street performers, music and a variety of stalls brought the streets alive. One of our key landmark buildings to visit was the former AEG factory, a seminal piece of industrial architecture. We had planned to combine this with lunch at the highly-rated Crunch Kantine veggie restaurant. Unfortunately, we found a notice in the window advising customers they had gone on holiday. Time for the back-up plan to swing into action – you should always have a back-up plan as part of your itinerary. Consequently, we made our way to the nearby junction of Stephanstraße and Havelberger Straße to see if our fortunes would be any better at Valladares Feinkost. Wow, we hit the jackpot. Not only was the café ultra-cool with a soundtrack including Bon Iver and The White Stripes, but it was staffed by a lovely woman with a sense of humour. And to cap it all Valladares Feinkost has a totally vegan menu and …. a fridge full of bottled craft beers from the BRLO Brewery of Berlin, a company with an ethical business philosophy of using ecologically sound and bio-certified ingredients. We tried the dry-hopped unfiltered Pale Ale which uses five different hop varieties to zing around your tastebuds. This was great but even better was the IPA, lovingly created with three German hop varieties. At 7.0%ABV, it packs a punch within the delightful flavours. Now, whilst all this lovely hoppy action was going on we were also getting stuck into a tasty lunch. We selected from the Panini menu and these were nicely presented and reasonably priced at €6.90. The menu is quite extensive with something for most folks luncheon desires. Valladares Feinkost is also a grocery shop and delicatessen so during our lounging around eating and drinking a few local residents drift in and out shopping for organic goodies. We still had lots of cycling to do so we had to wrench ourselves away from this wonderful café and climb back on the bikes. But how we enjoyed our visit here.