Café Berio

Café/bar on two floors (various shades of beige), with major al fresco situation and expanded crusing potential during warmer months. Reliably decent for breakfast (including a very nice Eier im Glas with toast...generous supply of Speck [bacon]), lunch and beyond, though the food is not of a vital standard (and the coffee tastes as if the coffee revolution never happened, which is kinda refreshing). Attracts gay and straight locals and tourists, and business picks up during the Easter BLF leather and September Folsom Europe weekends. Berio is Berlin's answer to Hamburg's Cafe Gnosa, though Gnosa bakes the much better cakes. (Neither is the gay-heavy hot spot of yesteryear.) Berio management changed in 2009, with a dip in quality of food, service and atmosphere (now drab and faded), though somewhat now improved. The Maassenstraße can't compete with the Motzstraße for top catwalk status, but traffic remains heavy enough for a decent regularity of people-watching, and centre-stage Berio does the trick despite some competition from neighbouring Impala [see entry]. But will it ever go back to being open 24 hours a day? Certainly a makeover is long overdue. U-Bahn: Nollendorfplatz, then a one-minute walk.