Clytie Roberts-Glage and her husband, Chef Rico Glage weren’t the first owners of the iconic Café Berlin, although their food and gracious hospitality are seen as mainstays in the community on Capitol Hill and throughout DC since they took over the restaurant in 2013.
The duo come from food families. Chef Rico Glage grew up in northeastern along the Baltic coast where his mom was a chef and Clytie comes from Killeen, Texas, growing up in the bar and restaurant business.
For anyone who has worked in food service, the long hours need to be offset by the ion for the work, particularly when 90 percent of the items on the Café Berlin menu are made from scratch (even desserts). The Chef emphasizes knowing where he is sourcing his ingredients for each of the dishes he prepares, and he focuses on minimizing food waste, an important lesson learned in his early training.
“Every job is hard,” says Rico, “and if you love what you’re doing, you can enjoy each day, even when you’re at work.” Rico praises his team, too, “they all know they will have long days, they will need to be able to prioritize – it will be stressful, but at the end of the day, they’ve performed good work.”
Rico and Clytie’s daughter Clarissa can observe the family business, too.
Says Clytie, “Having a family business allows our daughter to be with us more at work, teach a strong work ethic – including when we have failures followed by the resilience necessary to move through those failures.”
Authenticity and Tastes of Home
When asked what it’s like to bring authentic German cuisine to the US capitol, Rico says, “Americans have an expectation of German food that is mainly limited to the cuisine of Bavaria and Schwabia. I am from the northeast of . I worked for a long time in Bavaria and the Black Forest so I know that cuisine well, but I love to throw in dishes I grew up eating.” But, Chef Rico continues, “When I put those dishes on the menu, we often get comments and reviews about it ‘not being German.’”
Clytie, who grew up in a town with a significant first-generation German influence, says her perception of German cuisine changed since meeting Rico.
“Growing up, I was exposed to dishes mainly from the south of . My horizons were absolutely broadened when I met Rico. The first ‘weird’ thing he introduced me to was tinned Rugen fish on bread with butter or herbed cream cheese. When he opened the can, I was put off but after the first bite, I was hooked. Now, my goal when we travel back to to visit family is to find the most niche regional food item or to try as many variations on a dish as possible. One visit, I had Rote Grutze (red berry dessert) at six different places and three different versions of Mettwurst (typically a pork sausage flavored with garlic, cured and smoked, and can be eaten raw, cooked or grilled).”
Rico notes a couple of fresh ingredients he misses from that aren’t found here.
“Hornhecht! It’s known as a garfish in English and my favorite fish. It can be caught in the Baltic Sea in the months of May and June and had green bones.”
Rico notes another item I would think of as being easy to obtain—potatoes.
“Potatoes are another thing I miss – yeah, I know you can get potatoes, and we have a good farmer (Earth and Eats in Pennsylvania) to get some good ones in the season, however a lot of other good restaurants buy from them, too so they are only around in the season they are harvested. Once they are gone, we are back to the handful of mass-produced varieties that are less flavorful and more watery than those found in . There are so many varieties from which to choose, and there is a lot of attention paid to crop rotation to keep the soil healthy, so the flavor and quality is always there.”
As Rico and Clytie and their extended restaurant family close in on the restaurant’s 40th year, they’re excited about the celebration they are planning. Keep your eyes open for a summer celebration.
Special Dates and Menus:
• Cherry Blossom Festival (through April 13th) the Bavarian specialty, Schweinehaxe (roasted pork knuckle) will be featured on the menu.
• Spargelzeit: White Asparagus season starts around the beginning of April
• Easter Brunch on April 20
• Mother’s Day Brunch on May 11
Café Berlin will have a short closure in July for kitchen updates followed by their 40th anniversary celebration, commencing upon reopening.
Café Berlin is located at 322 Massachusetts Ave NE, cafeberlin-dc.com, 202.543.7656
Annette Nielsen, a writer and food systems advisor, returned to Capitol Hill from New York where she served as the executive director of the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center.
