Find the Best Restaurants in Berlin

If you’ve spent any time around Berlin restaurant owners lately, you might have heard the sighs. The rent. The guests. The math. I elaborated upon that gloominess in my 2025 retrospect, but here’s a suggestion: Let’s stop doom-scrolling, cut the complaining about literally everything (seriously) and go out to celebrate this marvellous melting point of food cultures that we are privileged to call home. Yes, Berlin might not be close to birthing the next Noma any time soon, but one might argue a big fat “who cares” when we finally have world class Mexican, Thai and Sushi restaurants opening up.

We’ve been keeping our ear to the ground, talking to chefs, suppliers, investors, and fellow food obsessives about what restaurants are about to open up. What’s emerged is a series of openings that makes me properly excited to go out and eat this year. So buckle up, grab your phone and get ready to fill your 2026 to-eat-list with some mighty tasty looking food.

This one comes with emotional baggage. Almi Bistro is opening in Prenzlauer Berg on the corner of Schwedter and Choriner, in the former home of Papa e Ciccia, the Italian “Promi-Restaurant” many Berliners still associate with truffle pasta, dangerously free-flowing Negronis, and the general optimism of another era. The old owners cashed out last year and a young, ambitious crew led by Chef Almaz has taken over. The pitch? “Modern food, classic at heart.” Vague, but what they’ve shown so far looks promising: seasonal, clean looking plates, cocktails done with intent, and a detail I love: A dedicated Schnaps menu! We’re watching closely.

This is the kind of opening that made me sit up straight and read the menu twice. Elotl is the long-coming project of Franco Yahir, a much appreciated member of the scene, last seen cooking at Bar Normal and before that at Frea. Elotl is a restaurant where “Mexican and Latin American cooking will be used lens through which to reinterpret German cuisine”. To break that down into dishes, think of Rinderroulade Birria, Quarkknödel with Chile Ancho, Kassler à la Veracruzana etc. or to put it in Franco’s words: “Mexikanische Küche auf Deutsch”. In my words: if this works, it could be one of the most original and audacious kitchens of Berlin. Opening planned for mid-February to early March.

Nichi Getsu is the new project from the Shiori crew, the Japanese-Korean chef owners famous for the Kaiseki style Japanese restaurant Shiori in Mitte. Their next move has me on my toes: A counter-style Edomae Sushi spot in Friedrichshain, led by a new Japanese head chef they recruited. The reason I’m particularly excited: Shiori has always been a top destination for us, but what many people don’t know is that since the pandemic the restaurant has quietly levelled up into what by all means could be described as the best Japanese restaurant in all of Berlin, across all categories. And a higher end sushi restaurant by this crew is exactly what the kind of thing that could get me to go to Friedrichshain (no offense). Opening is planned for March - April.

This restaurant technically opened while we were still typing (last week), but is never the less an opening to have on your radar Fukagawa comes from the team behind the ramen shops with the same name, and the founders are now stepping firmly into more ambitious territory in the former home of Tante Fichte. Head chef Leonardo Bonatti leads the kitchen, with Felix Thoms (ex-Bob & Toms) as sous chef. The food? From the looks: Classical, European fine dining with Japanese influences, and an unapologetic use of luxury ingredients such as truffles and caviar. From a distance, places like Frantzén and Loumi seem to be responsible for a lot inspiration. This is high-stake fine dining, and possibly the most daring opening on this list. We’re curious to see how Berlin responds.

Welcome the guaranteed crowd-pleaser to the list! The face that the Pinci crew are opening their second restaurant at Paul-Lincke-Ufer will cause ripple effects across the Berlin cool-sphere. If you live in Kreuzberg or Neukölln and ever hesitated about fighting for a table at Pinci, this is very good news. Breda will be bigger, more wine-focused, and centered around classical trattoria cooking from Piedmont and Lombardy. Nothing revolutionary here, and that’s exactly the point. Expect comfort and a room full of very very well-dressed, tipsy regulars from day one.

Yes, you heard right. Mogg is getting the band back together and you’re invited to the opening concert. In case you don’t know, Paul Mogg is Berlin’s undisputed pastrami champion, a feat he demonstrated over and over again at his original New York Deli on Auguststrasse before he was forced out of the location in 2024. Now he’s reopening inside Kalle Halle, the highly ambitious food court on Karl-Marx-Straße. Since the closure of the original location, no one has truly filled the Reuben-shaped hole in this city’s heart. Expect classic pastrami sandwiches, the legendary Reuben, but also completely new items such a French Dip Sandwich. Redemption never tasted so good.

Rram is the next chapter from Don Santaniviboo, Berlin’s forward-thinking Thai chef who’s made a name in the scene over the last years. With the stop of his involvement in his first ventures Tossakan and Maiyarap and the subsequent focus on his latest restaurant Hanuman in Kreuzberg, he’s now extending his portfolio to a new project in Mitte on Torstrasse. Rram is set to be inspired by Thai home cooking, particularly pre-war recipes from a time of scarcity, seasonality, and deep technique. Don spent much of last year in Thailand researching, and considering how sincerely interesting and delicious the food at Tossakan, Maiyarap and Hanuman were for the opening periods, expectations are high.

Last but not least, Iconico, which is the third restaurant from the Mexican El Rey / El Oso crew - a fact alone that makes us put all our attention towards this opening. Iconico is set open this spring in Kreuzberg’s Bergmannkiez and the neighborhood should be mighty excited. Named after a corn variety, Iconico will sit between casual and upscale: slightly more refined than El Rey, still relaxed, and very drink-forward. Expect tacos, tostadas, and corn-centric specials like flautas and gorditas, led by a newly secured Mexican chef I’m genuinely excited about. The owners seem to have a lot of plans for this restaurants and it has all the ingredients to become a serious new reference for Mexican food in Berlin.

The great tragedy of Berlin best ramen has always been its elusiveness. The city’s very best bowls have behaved like rare birds - briefly glimpsed, then gone again. Le Duc Ramen, Ramen Flow, Kuma Ramen, and Food Technique have long existed in a parallel universe of pop-ups, pre-orders, and pilgrimages, rather than somewhere you could simply walk into. That may finally be about to change. Kuma Ramen already did it at Markthalle Pfefferberg, and Food Technique is next. Headed by the iconic ramen obsessive Christopher Selig, Food Technique is, according to our solid intel, closing in on a permanent Berlin address. Which feels momentous, considering that until now your options were either ordering a ramen kit and receiving it via his legendary red bucket (lowered by rope from his Prenzlauer Berg apartment) or chasing one of his pop-ups, most memorably the Tokyo-collaboration series at Chipperfield Kantine, which quietly reset the city’s ramen bar. With Stefan Hentschel (formerly of Cookies) now onboard as a partner, this is shaping up to be a seriously exciting opening: spectacular, surgically elegant high-end ramen, plus shrimp wontons so good they currently have no equal in Berlin. Consider me impatient.

If you ever worried about Berlin’s restaurant future, this list hopefully provides the proof how it’s far from bleak. Yes, once financial realities kick in, we're most likely going to see a number of restaurants close over the next months, but these openings can act as a beacon of hope for the scene. Most of these openings come from established players, that essentially who’s brave enough (and stubborn enough) to open an ambitious restaurant right now. Also, we’re always more likely to hear about ambitious openings from established players. If we’ve missed something you’re excited about, please send it our way. We’ll be following these openings closely (and eating our way through them) as 2026 unfolds.