Style Icon and Grande Dame of Berlin Nightlife
Britt Kanja is a Berlin style icon and the Grande Dame of the city's nightlife. Born in West Berlin, she danced professionally across Europe before co-initiated the legendary 90 Grad club in Schöneberg in 1989, where she ran a themed party every month for sixteen years. She dresses in what she calls Eclectic Vintage, owns more hats than she can count, and is still out most nights.
From Britt’s own stories, with the addresses as published.
The Bellboy concept comes from Tel Aviv, where the original has long had cult status in the nightlife scene. In Berlin the interior, menu and award-winning cocktails keep alive the mood of 1920s Europe, and the kitchen serves oysters and caviar. It sits a few steps from Gendarmenmarkt.
Fotografiska Berlin has been housed since 14 September 2023 in the former Kunsthaus Tacheles, a listed building that was carefully restored. The museum covers 5,500 square metres on Oranienburger Straße. Alongside exhibitions it has a restaurant, a café bar and a rooftop bar.
Victoria Bar opened in 2001 at Potsdamer Straße 102, on a stretch of street that was not yet known for good drinks. The room is defined by hand-painted wallpaper, green leather and a very long bar, with a menu of around 200 items. A fire in December 2022 closed it for several months, and it reopened in 2023.
SOLAR is a sky restaurant and cocktail bar with a 270° panorama over the city. The entrance is in the rear courtyard, and a glass lift takes you up to the restaurant and bar, which sit on two floors.
GRACE is the restaurant and bar of Hotel Zoo on the Kurfürstendamm. The restaurant is designed in the style of a New York townhouse by US designer Dayna Lee, with a kitchen that blends Asian and European flavours. The bar draws on the building's history as a meeting place for international film stars and reinterprets classic cocktails of the 1920s and 1950s.
This French-style bistro at Kantstraße 152 came into its own in 1979, when new owners from the Austrian art scene replaced the kitschy decoration with an art collection. Art still covers the walls, much of it linked to the artists who came here to eat and drink.
Berlin's party scene was cold and ego-orientated.
White lilies, treats and fresh fruit, distributed across the tables. Whispering welcome.
Our flyers were collected by collectors as works of art. There was a thirst for the enjoyment of life in the air.
At the beginning of 1989, in the empty hall of a car workshop in Schöneberg, Britt Kanja co-initiated a club. The street outside, Dennewitzstraße, turns a right angle into Kurfürstenstraße at that exact spot…
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Britt’s picks are personal, and so are yours. Tell us the place you’d send a friend to — or pitch the story of your own city.
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