Food & Drink

A new dining trend has hit Berlin, a city which loves anything alternative. Secret restaurants, which are unpublicised and hard to find, are the dish du jour.

One such spot is Rodeo Club (Balhaus Ost Pappelallee 15, +49 163 687 50 13, rodeo-club.net), a restaurant open only on Thursday nights in a 19th-century dancing hall called Balhaus Ost. Sample Rodeo's set three-course feast by signing up to an email list and waiting for an invitation.

To confuse matters, Rodeo Restaurant (+49 163 162 0168, rodeo-berlin.de) is a competing eaterie run by ex-partners of Rodeo Club. It is found in an old post office via a hidden courtyard and diners eat in a room with gilt walls and dramatic drapes, to a backdrop of dance music played by a DJ.

In an undisclosed location in the Kreuzberg area, The Shy Chef (theshychef.wordpress.com) seats just six on Fridays to Sundays. A Swedish chef known only as Maria opens the doors to her beautiful apartment for £43 a head. The luxe menu is kept secret until the night, and is shared around one large table.

Cookies Cream (Behrenstraße 55, 10117, +49 30 2749 2940, cookiescream.com) is another secret worth sharing. This hip vegetarian restaurant can only be reached by navigating a dark back alley and by knocking on a metal door. Once you have been buzzed in, you'll discover a candlelit restaurant with distressed concrete walls hung with art. Chef Michael Kempf's dishes are as fab as the décor – a must is his cauliflower cannelloni with watercress and Parmesan dumplings.

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