The menu at Funk You in the Bikini House, Berlin has a personality close to that of its owners, Susanne and Alejandro Dimas. As lively as it is grounding, it strikes the perfect balance.The vast selection of food available is based on their own health experiences and reflects the couple’s passion for sharing seasonal, health-conscious food. They treat their customers as friends and value the personal connection they have formed with their ingredients and suppliers. Maybe that’s why the café has been leading the way with superfoods, juices and smoothies since it burst onto the health-food scene in Berlin fours years ago.

When it comes to nutrition, Susanne has a simple philosophy – rather than sticking rigidly to one prescribed diet she finds it best to “listen to yourself and your body and don’t just eat what your head tells you to”. She first started paying attention to her diet during her pregnancy and she learnt how important it is to get the balance right.  “I never start the day without a smoothie,” she says, smiling. Since finding her balance she’s not looked back, and today the café provides vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free and raw options, covering a variety of different approaches to health.

We believe that food should be inclusive and we try to cater for as many different types of diet as possible.

Alejandro, on the other hand, became aware of the importance of nutrition when he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of twelve. “That’s when I realised that eating is important. And not just eating, but eating well.”  He learnt that eating the right things could have the power to help heal his body after intensive medical treatment. After his recovery, he continued with this approach for sustaining his health.  “And because of this, I also came into contact with lots of ingredients I didn’t know before, like guanabana”, he explains. As a result of their personal health experiences, Susanne and Alejandro pack their green smoothies and juices with superfoods such as spirulina, raw cacao and guanabana which is said to help prevent cancer for the health benefits to their customers. Finding these specialist foods is not an easy task in Berlin and they have been personally building their own network of suppliers since they started out. “Finding guanabana, for instance, can be notoriously difficult. It’s not like getting apples and oranges, you have to go off the beaten track,” describes Susanne.

Funk You has steadily been trying out new ideas over the last four years and with the growing demand for quality, health-conscious food in Berlin, they have branched out into vegan catering for athletes (such as Ultimate Frisbee), pop-up juice bars at festivals like Fusion festival and other events like Berlin Fashion Week and catering for the German Press Days. However, if you can’t wait to see them at one of these events, you can catch them in the cafe any day of the week in the Bikini House. Feel free to ask questions, they are generous with their knowledge, although Alejandro puts it differently – ‘customers don’t come to learn from us, we learn from the customers’.

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