Vau proudly brandishes its signs of distinction: a Michelin star and 17 points in the Gault Millau, received in a near-unprecedented first year of opening.

Vau’s story stretches back more than 200 years, when Jewish socialite and activist, Rahel Varnhagen, invited the intellectual elite to join her for conversation and debate in this very locale on the Gendarmenmarkt. The restaurant’s general manager strives to provide the same kind of hospitality, that of “eating with friends as if in the comfort of a friend’s home.”

Dishes are composed using fresh, seasonal products—from Berlin where possible—and consistently pursue the philosophy of the chef’s gastronomical mentor, Josef Viehhauser, who called for no more than three products on any given plate. The interior features artwork by award-winning Cologne artist Oliver Jordan. Exhibiting interplays between glass and steel, shale and pearwood, Venetian “stucco lustro” plaster walls and Thonet cantilever chairs, Vau is certainly one of the most modern restaurants in Berlin, appropriately placed in Mitte.