The former industrial building from 1841 with metre-high ceilings in Berlin provides an ideal backdrop for the Kink Bar & Restaurant and the light installation by Kerim Seiler.
Photo: Robert Rieger, Kink Bar & Restaurant

BAR & RESTAURANT
That leisurely twist

With their Kink Bar & Restaurant, Oliver Mansaray and Daniel Scheppan recently opened a new culinary highlight in Berlin’s Pfefferberg complex – in an old disused brewery building.

by Anna Moldenhauer | 8/10/2020

“What we felt was important was for the Kink Bar & Restaurant to boast a design that was neither readily interchangeable nor had overly clean lines,” Oliver Mansaray reports. Together with Daniel Scheppan, with whom he has been dreaming up projects ever since kindergarten, he has most recently upped the ante in the Pfefferberg grounds on Schönhauser Allee: The result is a bar, a restaurant and a culinary lab, three open rooms that are linked to one another. And during the present warm summer weather, the summer garden outside has also opened. The restaurant, with a large window front and open kitchen, offers plenty of daylight and bright areas, contrasting the interior with leather upholstery, long dining tables with tabletops of untreated wood and numerous references to the building's industrial past - as with Hay's "Result" chair with a steel frame. In the bar, the atmosphere is loungey in subdued light: The prevailing color here is anthracite, alternating with wooden surfaces and the voluminous seating cushions of Roche Bobois’ modular “Mah-Jong” sofas. Together with interior designer Berit Hoerschelmann, the duo have realized a concept that combines many styles and yet nevertheless paints a homogeneous picture: from “Rivet”, Frama’s geometric side-tables made of untreated aluminum, to the Serax “Pawn” ceramic stools and Atelier Haussmann’s “Herrenberger Hocker” made of powder-coated tubular steel and reminiscent of 1930s industrial designs. A whole array of accessories and textiles take their place alongside the furniture as if they had always been there – all inspired by North African Berber culture. By way of natural highlights, opulent green plants bring extra life to the setting.

The old build, which is home to the Kink Bar & Restaurant, is no less exciting: The erstwhile industrial building constructed in 1841, with its very high ceilings and classical rounded arches, provides an ideal backdrop for the high-end dining and bar. The many original details attesting to the history of the building contribute to its charming atmosphere, be it the steel girders and fair-faced brickwork or the window with the iron bars, behind which the lab is located. There, head barkeeper Arun Naagenthira Puvanendran is busy devising new ideas for the small but refined drinks list, which features such great creations as “Smokey Mangito”, “Malpaso Bergamotto” or “Flowers of Puerto Rico”. He conjures up his own distilled spirits using a rotary evaporator, which chef de cuisine Ivano Parolo also loves, because with it he can dream up refined aromas. There are classic Gin & Tonics for anyone who finds this all a tad too experimental.

“The idea was for the space to remain imposing and yet seem homely and not pretentious in any way,” Oliver Mansaray comments. Design that is there to be used combined with energetic, contemporary art, such as the somehow mysterious “Conus” sculpture made of slender strips of steel, or a fragmentary vase made of concrete, both pieces created by artist Philipp Emanuel Eyrichs. Meanwhile, Kerim Seiler purpose-devised an installation made of neon tubes for the space – it’s called “Spaceknot (Pfefferberg)”. “Kerim is one of our long-standing friends. And for the light installation, which is over 100 meters long, he built a 3D model of the footprint of the bar and then presented different pieces for us to choose from,” Mansaray explains. The choice fell on a dynamic figure consisting of a red luminescent line that forms an abstract closed cycle. It floats like a swiftly sketched pattern over the black monolith, which Berlin-based studio Hidden Fortress developed to form the epicenter of the bar. Oliver Mansaray and Daniel Scheppan were able to ideally combine their expertise as trained cabinet makers, restaurant managers and gourmets of surprising haute cuisine when devising the concept for the Kink Bar & Restaurant. The fruit of their labors is a true symbiosis of culinary refinement, fine cocktails and events, which adds a new, fresh twist to the offerings in the Pfefferberg grounds.