by Cornelia Reiher

Over the past six years, the number of Japanese eateries in Berlin has not only increased, but they have also diversified in terms of menus, ownership, prices and customers. While only a few restaurants closed during the pandemic, some moved to other parts of the city where owners expect more affluent customers and turnover while others have changed their opening hours. According to some of our research participants, food entrepreneurs and chefs realized that they prefer to work less in order to improve their work-life balance and that this is also feasible from an economic perspective. Therefore, some Japanese-style eateries are only open on weekends now and many have reduced their menus for economic reasons. In addition, take-out services established during the pandemic are still in place and this service has changed eating practices from eating out to eating at home more often for many people.

Window displays of Japanese restaurants in Berlin
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

Japanese restaurants in Berlin are still mostly family-owned neighborhood restaurants run by Japanese entrepreneurs or part of restaurant chains owned by people with diverse nationalities ranging from German to Vietnamese. Most sell food they call Japanese for an average price. The menu often features home-style food (katei ryōri), noodle soups or sushi. There also exists a small group of high-end gourmet restaurants, but currently, the Michelin guide only features two Japanese restaurants in Berlin. Catering services operated by self-employed Japanese who also sell their food at markets, online or in pop-up stores is another field of activity for Japanese food entrepreneurs who contribute to the city’s culinary diversity.

Restaurant signs and decoration of Japanese restaurants in Berlin
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

Different ownerships of Japanese restaurants also brought about changes in the way restaurants welcome and seat their customers. Some food entrepreneurs who ran Japanese eateries in the US before coming to Berlin introduced counters and queues to Berlin, a practice that is rather uncommon in Germany. Instead of taking a free seat right away, customers have to approach the person behind the counter who tells them to wait for a certain time and then stand in line waiting. This style has become more common in the hip and popular districts of the city and makes these places look more desirable because of the long waiting lines.

Communication with customers: restaurant windows show awards for best eatery issued by several gourmet and city magazines in Berlin and some restaurants display political messages
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

All Japanese restaurateurs in Berlin we talked to emphasized that they wanted to serve delicious food to their customers. They have high standards with regard to the quality of the food they create. All embrace local and fresh ingredients, but adjust it to their needs as Japanese food entrepreneurs, workers and chefs abroad and acknowledge that Japanese food served in Berlin is always fusion to a certain extent. Thus, the substitution of ingredients is a common and creative experience and practice among Japanese food producers in Berlin.

While the number of Covid-19 infections is still high in Berlin, restaurants operate based on the 2G+ rule I have introduced in my previous post. However, unlike in the two lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, customers can enjoy Japanese food in restaurants and many do so. I am looking forward to follow-up on future changes and challenges for food entrepreneurs and workers in Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes together with my students in the upcoming summer term.

by Cornelia Reiher

The new year 2022 began with an unprecedented increase of Covid-19 infections in Germany. Berlin was especially hit hard. With the numbers of fully vaccinated people stagnating around 70% and with the numbers of those people who have received their third vaccination still below 50%, Berlin’s government introduced new rules for restaurants that came into effect on January 15. The new 2G+ rules allow entry to restaurants only to those guests who have been vaccinated three times or who have been at least vaccinated twice and have a negative test result from the same day. The former can enter restaurants without a negative test result.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

When this blog turned into a Covid-19 blog in 2020, I could not imagine that I would still write about Covid-19 two years later. But fortunately, this time, restaurants stayed open after the second lockdown ended in June 2021. As a countermeasure against the spread of the new omicron variant, from November 2021, only vaccinated or recovered people were allowed to enter restaurants in Berlin under the 2G rule. The new 2G+ rules tighten restrictions and further exclude unvaccinated people from restaurant visits.

How do restaurants respond to this new situation? In order to find that out, equipped with my mask and my vaccination certificate on my cell phone, I visited some Japanese restaurants in Charlottenburg. The first thing that caught my attention were similar 2G+ signs issued by Dehoga, the German Hotel and Restaurant Business Association, that were pinned to each restaurant’s door.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

According to one restaurant owner, compliance with the new rules was strictly checked after their introduction by members of Berlin’s office of public order. Restaurants’ service staff had to send away several customers who could not provide the necessary certificates and some said that business was rather slow compared to before the new rules came into place. Seating takes more time now, because everybody’s vaccination certificate has to be checked before seating or serving food and service staff have to carefully check whether a customer has been vaccinated two or three times and ask for a negative test result in addition if necessary. In some cases, people cued in front of restaurants waiting for the check of their vaccination certificates. In addition to indoor dining, most restaurants continue to offer takeout and/or delivery services.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

On the bright side, none of the restaurants we have worked with during the past years closed down despite all the hardship they had to endure during the pandemic, including two restaurant shutdowns. Although many restaurateurs stated in Summer 2020 that their restaurants would not survive a second shutdown, luckily, they did survive. Nevertheless, I really hope that the Covid-19 pandemic ends soon. Until that day I have to continue my research with a mask to enjoy the culinary treats Berlin’s Japanese restaurants have to offer to those waiting for a reopening of Japan’s borders.

by Cornelia Reiher

When Covid-19 infections were very low in Northern Europe we seized the chance to leave Germany, where the fourth wave of the pandemic was already casting its shadow ahead in October 2021. Fully vaccinated we were amazed about Denmark where people did not wear masks and where we did not see any of the Covid-19 test centers that were omnipresent in Berlin at the time. Quickly adjusting to the new freedom, we enjoyed Copenhagen’s vivid food culture and visited a number of Japanese restaurants. Copenhagen features a variety of different Japanese eateries ranging from the typical sushi restaurant to high-class fusion cuisine. The city is also home to Japanese bakeries, izakaya, sake bars, ramen restaurants and chain restaurants like Wagamama and Sticks’ n’ Sushi that have branches in other European cities like London or Berlin as well.

Ownership and interior of the different restaurants were just as diverse as in Berlin. The chain restaurant Wagamama in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, for example, is an example of modern, stylish Japanese/Asian fusion cuisine to be found anywhere around Europe. But we also ate at one Japanese restaurant with Japanese owners and staff. The place was decorated with Japanese art and craft objects featuring tatami mats and chabudai. Guests had to take their shoes off and the waitresses wore aprons. It serves food promoted as authentic Japanese food on the menu and on its website. The restaurant opened in the 1960s and claims to be the first Japanese restaurant in Scandinavia. This type of traditional Japanese restaurant has become quite rare in Berlin where some of the older Japanese restaurants like Daitokai have closed a few years ago.

Not only the interior was traditional. The quality of the food was very close to food available in Japan and the owner told us that they import many of the ingredients. Because they strive for authenticity, they take taste and quality very serious as the following anecdote shows: One member of our group could not finish the sushi she had ordered and asked the waitress whether she could take it home. Instead of coming back with the sushi, the owner approached us and explained that she would not advise us to take it home because it would lose its taste. When my friend insisted, she inquired about how far away she lived, gave exact instructions about how to store it, when to eat it the latest and came back with a plastic bag with additional ice. So, my friend took the sushi into the already quite cold Copenhagen night.

This “sushi incident” shows, what we had already discovered when we interviewed Japanese food entrepreneurs, food workers and chefs in Berlin: Considerations about taste and aesthetics are very important and became a reason, why some Japanese restaurants did not offer food for take-out or relied on delivery services during the two Covid-19 restaurant shutdowns. With regard to take-out, some doubted that the food would still meet their quality standards when warmed up again at customers’ homes. Others did not trust the delivery companies to treat the food in a way that it would still look the same once it had reached the customers. In this regard, the trip to Copenhagen did not only offer interesting and delicious insights into Copenhagen’s Japanese foodscape, but also food for thought about recurring themes like taste and aesthetics of food we have come across before.

Giulia Noll and Tony Pravemann try to explain how customers define the authenticity of a Japanese restaurant in Berlin by using reviews from the crowd-sourced local business review and social networking site Yelp and summarized their results in a project report to provide exciting insights into the customers view in Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes.

After conducting online interviews for a year now, I was very happy to be able to go to a Japanese restaurant in Berlin to conduct an interview. I met with Kazuko and Niels at Tsukushiya. Kazuko is the chef and Niels the owner and manager of this Japanese restaurant that offers Japanese home-style food (katei ryōri). This includes for example okonomiyaki, donburi, curry rice and karaage. Kazuko came to Berlin in 2016 and Tsukushiya opened in February 2017.

I first spoke to Kazuko in Japanese for about an hour before Niels joined us and the interview continued in German. We touched upon several issues that came up in interviews with other restaurateurs and chefs during the past years as well, particularly vegan and vegetarian variations of Japanese food and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. When we met, Tsukushiya had just reopened for outdoor dining two weeks ago. The restaurants in the street received an extra permission to put more tables and chairs outside in spots that are usually designated parking lots.

Kazuko and Niels both confirmed what we have heard from other Japanese food entrepreneurs and food workers in Berlin before. Despite the economic difficulties, the pandemic enabled them to have more time for themselves. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the restaurant opened at noon and in the evenings with only one day off during the week. During the first lockdown in spring 2020, they had offered takeout and the summer business in 2020 went surprisingly well, but during the second lockdown from November, they closed their restaurant until March. After the reopening in May, they decided to just open in the evenings and changed their menu to less laborious dishes. Both are very  happy that customers have returned and view the future with optimism.

In the past years, participants of this method course have visited Japanese restaurants to practice participant observation as customers. This year, however, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, indoor dining in restaurants was just permitted very recently and only few Japanese restaurateurs reopened their eateries for indoor dining. While for outdoor dining a negative Covid-19 test result is not required anymore, it is still mandatory for indoor dining. Therefore, there is much more going on outside of restaurants where people can enjoy food, but only together with members of one more household.

Because of these restrictions, I decided to assign an ethnographic walk to practice observation skills instead of a joint restaurant visit this year. I divided students into three groups and set a different walking route for each team around Kantstraße in Charlottenburg. This area is not only famous for its Asian shops and restaurants, but is also the place where the first two Japanese restaurants in Germany opened before World War II (Möhring 2018, 36). Today, there exists a small cluster of 15 Japanese restaurants around Kantstraße, most of them with Japanese or Vietnamese ownership.

All teams were assigned to walk the area and visit different restaurants. As a broader research question, all teams were to observe how Japanese restaurants respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to answer this question, they were supposed to take field notes and pictures, describe the restaurants, menus, customers as well as staff and start at least one conversation with customers or staff. I also asked them to buy some food and to describe its taste, arrangement and ingredients.

After the 90 minutes walk, I met each group at Savignyplatz to discuss their experiences, impressions and possible difficulties. Students reported very interesting insights and encounters. They will write their own blog posts about their results and experiences. They have enjoyed the ethnographic walk very much and I am looking forward to see more field notes and pictures and to discuss the merits of participant observation in class.

Reference:

Möhring, Maren (2018): Von Schwalbennestern und neuen Fingerfertigkeiten. Globalisierung und esskulturelle Transfers am Beispiel asiatischer Küchen in Deutschland. In: Jahrbuch für Kulinaristik 2, pp. 31-51.

To get some more interview practice in Japanese, we invited another Japanese food entrepreneur for an online interview. Shin is a pastry chef and in 2016, founded a café in Berlin. He sells Japanese-French fusion cakes and tartlets, matcha latte and, during the summer, matcha ice. During the interview, students asked about his café, his products and work and about his impression of Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes. In the end, we also inquired about his experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The interview went smooth due to students’ great questions and Shin’s willingness to share insights about his life in Berlin and his work. Although the pandemic had a negative impact on his business, he also enjoyed some time for himself due to a reduced workload. He said it was no problem to switch to takeout service, because cake can be taken home easily. He didn’t only receive financial support from the federal government and from Berlin’s federal state government, but his regular customers stopped by during the pandemic and bought cake to support him as well. While it was rough at times, he wanted to keep his café open for his customers. In November 2020, there were only very few customers coming on weekdays, so he decided to only open on weekends. With the relaxed Covid restrictions, customers slowly return for enjoying matcha latte and cake at the café’s terrace. Instead of meeting Shin online, next time, we’ll go there and have some of his delicious cake ourselves.

Pastries and sweets from Shin’s Café (Copyright © Shin Komine)

After the first online interviews with students from Seikei University, we had the opportunity to conduct an interview about Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes offline. Due to the relaxed Covid-19 regulations we met outside for a picnic with Akiko. Because only members from a limited number of households were allowed to meet, I divided the class into two groups. Akiko brought vegan obentō, so students could enjoy food while interviewing her.

Akiko runs a catering business that is specialized in vegetarian and vegan food. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, her business was disrupted and she now receives support from the German employment agency to make a living. She offers lunchboxes, cookies and preservable food like miso and kimchi, for example and keeps in touch with her customers via a mailing list and social media. Students were eager to hear why she came to Berlin, how her business went before the pandemic and how she copes with the Covid-19 induced changes. We had interviewed Akiko a year ago and in June 2020 she was grateful for the German Soforthilfe (financial support) and rather optimistic. But the catering business has not recovered yet, since joint business lunches, private parties and gallery openings are impossible.

Students had prepared questions for the interview with Akiko by checking her website and took turns in asking questions. Outdoor interviewing posed some challenges for interview recording and eating, talking and taking notes at the same time was quite difficult. However, doing interviews face to face and eating the food the research participant had prepared offered more opportunities to ask questions students had not thought about before. While online interviews are a great option to overcome the limitations caused by the pandemic, by meeting in real life all participants created a much more relaxed atmosphere without technical problems. Our picnic also provided the first chance to meet for the students who have so far only met in online classes.