Barra

Sharing plates in front of an open kitchen in Neukölln's Schillerkiez: house-made pasta, wines from growers the team knows. Bib Gourmand since 2020.

Okerstraße in the Schillerkiez is a quiet residential street, and from the outside Barra barely stands out. Inside, the room is pared back, with brick walls and a counter in front of the open kitchen. It is open on purpose: guests should see how the food is cooked, and the cooks want to see guests enjoying it. That makes the counter the best seat in the house.

Daniel Remers and Kerry Westhead are from Manchester and have lived in Neukölln since 2012. Remers was previously head chef at Industry Standard; Westhead runs the floor and the wine list. Before Barra opened at the end of 2018, the team toured friends' restaurants across Berlin with pop-up dinners, and the room was busy from the first night. Barra has held a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin Guide since 2020.

The food is for sharing, either as a set menu for the whole table or à la carte. Every dish is listed by three or four ingredients, such as hamachi with green tomatoes and gooseberry, or girolles with fig, hazelnut and hollandaise. There is a lot of craft behind that: the kitchen does whole-animal butchery, pickling and preserving. The pasta is made in-house and always on the menu, most recently as cavatelli with wild boar ragù. Much of the produce is regional, with citrus from Italy and seafood from Brittany.

The wines come from European growers the team knows personally, and the list runs from aperitivo to digestivo, with good options for drinking little or no alcohol. Barra is open Monday to Friday only, with two seatings each evening. Larger groups sit at a long table in the back room.