Last Sunday, I opened doors to the first brunch at the inofficial "b.alive raw café" at my little studio loft in Berlin Mitte. It was a great success. 11 hungry people showed up with sceptic faces wondering whether THIS raw food would actually fill them or if they need to go to have a Döner or Currywurst after. I think, noone had to :-)
The brunch menu featured:
- Banana Blueberry Chocolate Smoothies
- Raw Homemade Superfoods Granola (including Goji Berries, Maca, Raw Chocolate, etc.) served with a freshly made Goji Berry Coconut Milk and fresh fruit
- Raw Buckwheat Pizza with fermented cheese and marinated vegetables
- Nori Rolls with Fermented Wasabi Sunflower Cheeze
- Chocolate Nachos with a Sweet Spicy Walnut Saffron Paté
- Sicilian Fennel Orange Radicchio Salad with Walnuts
- Apple Pie with Caramel Cashew Sauce
The raw pizza was definitely the brunch star. Everybody was surprised on how pizza can be raw until they figured out that the misterious black box in the corner was the magical tool: a dehydrator. This pizza was delicious, with a crust made from buckwheat and sun-dried tomatoes, a layer of fermented sunflower seed cheeze, another layer of marinara sauce and topped with a vegetable medeley of eggplants, zucchini, spinach and bell pepper that have been marinated in olive oil and Italian herbs for 24 hours. Everything together created a perfect combination of textures and flavours.
My personal favourite were the chocolate nachos with a walnut saffron paté. The chocolate in the nachos (made from a base of sunflower seeds and corn) gave them a bitterness which is well complemented by the sweetness and spicyness of the paté, made from walnuts, saffron, dried apricots, chilli and some other little secrets.
For the Nori Rolls, I used the fermented sunflower seed cheeze and flovoured it with Wasabi and Soy Sauce, used it as a filling together with raw veggies like cucuber, carrots, peppers, avocavdos and sprouts, et voilà, a beautiful vegan interpretation of a maki roll.
The celebrities of the first brunch were: Writer Travis Jeppesen, art photographer Luigi, Art Gallerist Michael Rade, Roisin Cronin, Mark Malossek, Sven Bretschneider, Fashion Youngster Reto Cameri, Fair Trade Coffee Roaster David MacGregor, DJ and Musician Snax and Berlinale volunteer Na'ama with her friend William.
Everybody, including me, was happy and shining by the end of the brunch and left with an obvious abundance of radiating energy from their first living food experience. At least the grateful smiles told me so. I am already looking forward to the next event.
