This is actually a eulogy, for a cafe on Knesebeckstrasse that closed last year. It was called The Kitchen. The food was delicious. The proprietress, Patricia Ferer, a warm and wonderful person from St. Louis via New York City, was always welcoming. But it was more than that. Sometimes the stars align such that a particular place sums up the experience of a generation or at least a neighborhood. The Kitchen was such a place. Open only 2 years and 9 months (almost exactly as long as the original, 1970s-defining Studio 54, as fate would have it) The Kitchen gave Charlottenburg a center where there had been none. People came by to eat lunch, to buy dinner to go, to drink coffee in the morning. But mostly they came by to meet each other. This corner of Berlin is notoriously lacking in community, but for a brief moment we had a real hang-out, where people talked between the tables and made lasting friendships. During the grey winter months it was cozy inside and on long summer afternoons its outdoor tables basked in sunshine. It was the rare place that always felt like home. (Anna Winger)