EXBERLINER Issue 148 April 2016

Allan’s Breakfast Club
Bonjour, mate
ERICA LÖFMAN
Your
Englishspeaking
radio in
Berlin.
If there’s one thing you notice when entering
Allan’s Breakfast Club (ABC), it’s Allan, the
personable chap who immediately comes to
greet you with a mix of casual Aussie warmth
and Gallic bon vivant spirit. Welcome to
Prenzlauer Berg’s first Australian café, where
you can indulge in Antipodean brunch during
the day and sip on French wines at night.
ABC boasts some of both cultures’ best
attributes: free-flowing tap water, friendly efficient
service and a classic croque monsieur.
And they seem to have mastered the art of
poaching eggs, not a small feat for Berlin.
This isn’t some gimmick brought back from
a gap year. Allan is a Frenchman
who lived half of his life in Sydney
and speaks Aussie English with a
French lilt. His mum is a chef, and
during his three years in Berlin,
Allan has worked everywhere
from Grill Royal’s bar to the
recently shuttered Melbourne
Canteen. After a successful
pop-up on Unter den Linden, the
thirtysomething went sedentary and is now
blessing Kollwitzkiez with a proper expat-style
brunch – a novelty in this part of town, where
breakfast largely remains a German hodgepodge
of nondescript cold cuts and cheese.
Besides the mishmash of French (an issue of
Charlie Hebdo) and Australian paraphernalia
ALLAN’S BREAKFAST
CLUB Rykestr. 13,
Prenzlauer Berg, U-
Bhf Senefelderplatz,
Thu-Sun 10-16 (breakfast),
Wed-Sat from
19:30 (wine bar)
ERICA LÖFMAN
(an “I heart Sydney” sticker), the one-room
café is rife with clever design details: a
skateboard truck turned coat hook under the
counter, honey jars certified by the German
Beekeepers’ Association as water glasses. It’s
small and cosy, and on any weekend morning
a startling number of brunchers (make sure to
reserve days in advance!) sit on high stools at
the window or at the counter, or on vintage
school chairs around the long dining table.
So what have they come for? Mostly
beautifully poached eggs served as spicy
shakshouka (€9) or with a side of green asparagus
and prosciutto (€10). And of course
Benedict-style (€10), with a
convincing hollandaise and a
choice of Parma ham or Allan’s
house-cured salmon – a secret
four-day ritual involving beetroot,
hence the unusual reddish
colour. Those beautiful chunks
of fish are something to die for,
and if you have an egg aversion
you can order them with
smashed avocado on top of two bagel halves
(or toasted sourdough, on demand) for €10.
It’s all so rich (in a good way) that we suggest
sharing a plate and keeping some room for
dessert (warm banana bread, brownies...).
For a lighter treat, there are salads (quinoa,
pumpkin, pomegranate and blue cheese,
€10) or simply delicious “avo” toast (€6).
After 7:30pm the place morphs into a
French wine bar with cold plates, cheese soufflé
and a clever DIY boozing concept: help
yourself to as many of the 12 open wines as
your liver can handle, write down each wine’s
number on a provided sheet of paper and pay
at the end (€2.50-5). Noteworthy is the unusual
abundance of rosés, including a Château
Miraval from the Brangelina estate.
Open just four days a week, this is a place
of indulgence, where a friend might drop by
with a box of sweet treats from a Berlin patissier
and Allan will open a glass of champagne
(rosé, of course). It’s a quiet 3pm on a Thursday
– what better way to enjoy a moment of
peace before the evening rush? FP
For
adventurous
thinkers.
www.nprberlin.de 49