Eating gluten-free in Berlin

Berlin is the largest city in Germany, and the choice is correspondingly large. It is just spread a long way apart. Half an hour on the S-Bahn is often the better decision than the snack stand round the corner.

Gluti offers guidance and is not a medical device. Its information does not replace medical advice.

Can you eat out gluten-free in Berlin?

Yes, and you will find more choice here than almost anywhere else in Germany, right down to kitchens and bakeries that work entirely gluten-free. The catch is the distance: the city stretches 45 kilometres from east to west, and the right address is rarely in your own district. So factor the journey in rather than taking whatever is nearest.

The second point is the pace. Many Berlin businesses are small, fast and busy, and the longer the queue, the less room there is for your question. Allergen information only gets you half way: it tells you which ingredients are in a dish, not which boards, tongs and fryers are used.

What should I know about Berlin?

Berlin is a city with a great deal of business under time pressure, and during trade fairs tables get scarce across whole parts of the city. A reservation where you raise your question straight away is worth it then.

Two peculiarities come on top of that. On Sundays the ordinary supermarkets are closed, apart from the few Sundays the city government releases; the shops selling travel supplies at the major mainline stations and the airport stay open, with a small range. So buy supplies on the Saturday. And the density of snack stands and Spätis (late-opening corner shops) is at the same time your risk, because they work without a separate kitchen: two or three reliable addresses in different parts of the city are worth more than taking your chances wherever you are.

Which Berlin dishes contain gluten?

Berlin cooking puts flour and bread in places the menu says nothing about:

• Currywurst: Fried sausage with curry sauce, in Berlin usually a skinless Brühwurst (scalded sausage), at some stands one with a casing. A Brühwurst may contain starch and vegetable protein, which then has to appear in the product name, for instance “mit Stärke” (with starch). The sauce is what decides it: look on the label for wheat flour, barley malt vinegar, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, and ask about the product rather than the dish.
• Döner Kebab: The flatbread is the obvious part, the spit is the more interesting one. Under the German guidelines for meat and meat products, Döner Kebab contains only meat, salt and spices and, where applicable, egg, onion, oil, milk and yoghurt; binders such as breadcrumbs or starch would have to appear in the product name, for instance as “Döner Kebab mit Stärke” (with starch). Those guidelines are not law, though, and official checks regularly find binders in spits that are sold as Döner anyway: ask to see the allergen record for the spit rather than relying on the word on the board.
• Bulette: The Berlin meatball, and its binder is bread: a soaked bread roll, or breadcrumbs instead. Both are wheat, so at a snack stand a Bulette practically always contains gluten, and it often ends up crumbled into other dishes. Ask whether the mixture is made without roll and breadcrumbs.
• Königsberger Klopse (meatballs in a pale caper sauce): Gluten sits in three places: the soaked roll in the mixture, the roux in the caper sauce, and the stock they are poached in, which often comes from a fond, a stock cube or instant powder containing wheat. Ask about all three separately, because a roll-free mixture is no help if the sauce is thickened. Capers, boiled potatoes and beetroot are unproblematic.
• Kalbsleber Berliner Art (calf’s liver Berlin style): A lesson in invisible flour: the slices of liver are turned in flour before frying, and the onion and apple rings are dusted with flour as well and fried in the same fat. The streaky bacon in the garnish needs a label of its own. Order liver, apple and onion expressly without flour, fresh fat in the pan included.
• Eisbein mit Erbspüree und Sauerkraut (cured pork knuckle with pea purée and sauerkraut): The good news among the classics: not one of the ingredients contains grain, only the preparation brings it in. Four things to ask about: ready-made powder in the pea purée, instant powder in the stock, flour in the sauce, and whether the sauerkraut is thickened, because the cabbage liquid is often bound with a roux or a sauce thickener. Without sauce and with freshly cooked purée the plate is straightforward.
• Soleier (brined eggs): Hard-boiled eggs with the shell cracked all over, steeped in a spiced brine, classically in a jar on the pub counter and with no grain ingredient. The egg itself is uncomplicated, the pub counter is not: rolls and Buletten are lying there, and the egg is peeled and halved by hand. Ask for washed hands or a board of its own, leave the bread and the shared mustard pot off, and with bought-in Soleier ask about the brine.
• Berliner Pfannkuchen: Wheat yeast dough, deep-fried in fat that other pastries run through as well, so there is nothing to be rescued here. The language trap matters more: order Pfannkuchen in Berlin and you get this filled deep-fried pastry, while the flat pancake from the pan is called Eierkuchen here and is made with wheat flour too. So ask about the product and not about the name.

Those are the most common cases, not all of them: with any pale or brown sauce in a Berlin pub, for instance with Senfeier (eggs in mustard sauce) or Stippe, flour is the default assumption. Your best bets are Eisbein, Soleier, and meat, fish, vegetables and potatoes without breading, flour or a thickened sauce.

What should I watch for at a Berlin snack stand?

In Berlin the Imbissbude (snack stand) is not a fallback but the institution where Currywurst and Döner are at home, and it works without a separate kitchen. Do not ask there in general terms for something gluten-free, ask for the written allergen record: for unpackaged food the information may be given verbally, but only if such a record exists, is available on request, and a notice or a sign at the product points to it. That sheet names the gluten-containing ingredients per dish, not the preparation: so ask in addition which sausage, which sauce and which spit are used.

The chips are the second point: potatoes are gluten-free, but many frozen chips carry a coating of wheat flour, and cutlets, fried fish and spring rolls run through the same fryer. Say in advance that the Schrippe (the Berlin bread roll) should be left off: it is picked up with the same tongs and crumbs over everything.

At night the situation tips over. The queue is long, the staff change, and nobody is going to dig out a record then. So ask once during the day in peace, note the answers down and simply check them again next time, because the sausage, the sauce and the spit at a stand often stay the same for a long while. If the staff or the range changes, you start again from the beginning. A Molle (usually a lager brewed from barley malt) and a Berliner Weiße (brewed from barley and wheat malt) both contain gluten, so neither is an option.

How does Gluti help me in Berlin?

In Gluti you can see on the map which places in and around Berlin are listed. Every place is checked by the Gluti team before it appears. The level tells you how a place works: “100% gluten-free”, “Separate preparation” or “Gluten-free options”. A good share of the checked Berlin places work entirely gluten-free, so you do not have to negotiate there. It is best to save one place each in the centre, in the west and in the east as favourites, then you still have an alternative on a trade fair evening.

Even checked information is no guarantee, because things can change in a kitchen. So ask every time anyway. Which questions work and which answers are a warning sign is in the article What to ask in a restaurant, and the background on fryers, pizza ovens and toasters is in the article on cross-contamination. If you are in the city for a trade fair, the railway or the airport, the guide on gluten-free travel will help, and for pastries the guide on cafés and bakeries. If you know a good place in Berlin that is missing from Gluti, you can suggest it in the app. And for talking to others: the German coeliac society (Deutsche Zöliakie-Gesellschaft, DZG) runs volunteer-led discussion groups across the country, and the DZG can tell you whether there is one in Berlin.