It can be tough living in the shadow of a big sibling. Lava, the little bro of acclaim-hoarder Lavanderia Vecchia, is having none of that—having taken over the front of the same Flughafenstraße building. By no means is Lava content playing a mere supporting role, it’s not even going after the same formula. Replace the belly-busting set menu with a more refined à la carte offering and a focus that stretches beyond the Italian peninsula into the wider Med.

The first room doubles up as a deli-type establishment, with a mamma-mia meat counter housing a deluge of carefully-cured hams and stink-tastic cheeses—from which you can whip up your own delicacies zu Hause. Then, follow through to the other rooms—one with an LED-light adorned leaking bathtub (art, presumably) and the other a more intimate, low-lit affair of surrealist dark greens and black-white checkerboards. It all lends the Trattoria, a curious Alice-in-Wonderland feel that detracts from the food not a jot. Lava is a sequel, but its top-notch cuisine and quirky touches are the match of its original, no doubt about that.

Concept restaurant Sauvage prepares and plates meals inspired by the so-called caveman philosophy regarding food. A fully manifest do-it-yourself ethos informs their culinary art, which they create using mostly organic, often locally-sourced whole foods. While it’s not fully farm-to-table fare, rest assured that owners Boris and Rodrigo are attending to every aspect of the kitchen—from clarifying homemade ghee butter to assembling “raw” seed-based crackers.

The one thing that you won’t find at Sauvage is anything from the grain family—in defiance of the German love-affair with dark brown breads, the guiding principle of the caveman diet is eschewing gluten. Perhaps it’s just another one of many food fetishes that will come and pass, but that’s little matter. Its results are surprising, substantive eats.