hier.: Seasonal lunch above the old bank vault
Vegetarian lunch, a changing weekly menu and an old bank vault filled with preserves: at hier., the kitchen follows the season.
At hier., lunch begins a few metres below the dining room. The old bank vault is lined with jars of pickled, fermented and preserved vegetables. It now serves as the kitchen’s pantry.
Since 1 June 2026, hier. has served weekday lunch on Schönhauser Allee. The kitchen describes itself as “naturally vegetarian”. Vegetables come from producers including Good Food Syndicate, pulses from Gut Friedersdorf and oils from Fläminger Genussland. Many ingredients come from farms and producers nearby, with others sourced elsewhere in Germany.
The idea for hier. dates back to 2022 and was initially conceived as a canteen for the offices at AchtBerlin. Before opening, dishes were developed over months in a test kitchen, brought to Schönhauser Allee, tasted and adjusted. The internal lunch concept eventually became a public restaurant with catering.
The kitchen’s commitment to regional sourcing becomes clearest in ingredients that restaurants normally take for granted. Lemons, olive oil, pepper, cinnamon, chocolate and conventional coffee are not used. The kitchen works instead with ingredients such as rapeseed and linseed oil, caraway, roasted fennel, juniper, herbs and sunflower seeds. The drinks list includes Muckefuck made from lupins, barley and spelt, served hot or as a cold brew.
On our visit, the menu includes celeriac stew with kidney beans and an autumn tart with Swiss chard, cheese and sour cream. The stew is full-flavoured, with the celeriac still clearly present and the beans giving it substance. In the tart, the slight bitterness of the chard meets the richness of the cheese and the acidity of the sour cream. Quark bake with redcurrants follows for dessert. It all feels exactly right for a cold Berlin lunch.
The menu is small. Salads, stews and oven dishes provide the framework, while the ingredients change. On Wednesdays, potatoes have a regular place with “Knolle & Grün”. On our visit, that means potato salad with roasted pointed cabbage, radishes and house pesto.
Part of the harvest is pickled, fermented or preserved and used later. The vault downstairs is where much of it is stored. It allows the kitchen to keep working with ingredients beyond their immediate harvest window.
Upstairs, the dining room is restrained. Its defining feature is a bench more than twelve metres long, made from solid local oak. Restored vintage chairs and refurbished cutlery from Berlin flea markets complete the room. One of hier.’s own lines is “Finally, nothing new.” In the dining room, that becomes a fairly literal design principle.
Celeriac stew, autumn tart, potato salad and quark bake belong to this particular November. In a few weeks, the menu will look different. hier. cooks to the rhythm of the harvest and preserves part of it for later. The old vault downstairs is a fitting place to keep it.
