Vegan Food, Once Tough to Find in Berlin, Is Now Flourishing

When Tran Mai Huy Thong was growing up as a vegetarian in West Germany, his peers couldn’t comprehend his choice to not eat meat.

As an adult, he moved to Berlin in the early 2000s, and his options for dining out in Germany’s capital were slim, with meatless options largely limited to Vietnamese-run restaurants — and even then, a dish with fish sauce or chicken broth may have been labeled vegan.

In Germany’s capital, Mr. Tran, the son of Vietnamese refugees who was working in fashion, also began doing concept designs for restaurants. Partly out of frustration with his own lack of choices, he gave clients a discount if they added a vegan dish to the menu.

He was confident his clients would discover that he was not alone in wanting more vegan-friendly menus.

“I tried to confront people in an easy way, to tell them that there are a lot of people out there, younger people out there, they think about their food, their health,” Mr. Tran said.

Mr. Tran’s conviction that there was a lot of pent-up demand proved accurate.

Twenty years later, Berlin’s thriving vegan dining scene reflects a broad host of cultural and culinary influences, with the city having become one of the richest vegan food cities in Europe, thanks in large part to risk-taking transplants attracted by the city’s openness to experiments.

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