Summer can be inexplicably busy, can’t it? Between market Sundays and street food Thursdays, trips to the lake and after-work hangouts in beer gardens, somehow the weeks just fill up and fly by. Food, therefore, usually needs to be three things: quick, tasty and good for on-the-go. One dish that delivers on all three is sushi, and luckily plenty of spots have opened in recent years that have elevated Berlin’s once unremarkable sushi scene. The latest is Friendly Fish, a casual takeaway joint that opened in May 2024 on Oranienburger Straße. Run by sushi lover Moritz Mary, the shop has all the favorites – tuna maki, salmon rolls – that bring the kind of chewy-creamy tenderness and lingering umami which make sushi the multi-sensory meal par excellence. But it’s not all raw fish: half of the menu is make up of vegetarian and vegan options – like ⁠the enoki nigiri topped with delicate enoki mushrooms with their tiny caps. There’s also a chickpea and cucumber maki with a cooling crispiness that is right on the mark after a long day in the sun. You can order the menu for pickup or delivery via the accounts on the website, over which you can collect friendly coins with every order and place your order to pick up within five minutes, or via the usual platforms – doors open from 08h for bagels and coffee, and to allow customers to get lunch ahead of time. Also worth mentioning are the salmon, tuna and vegan bento boxes, which are topped with sesame and seaweed. Extra special picnic in the park? We can taste the wasabi already.

Text: Benji Haughton / Photos: Dominik Hasert, Malwin Béla Hürkey, Sophie van Daniels

Friendly Fish, Oranienburger Str.5, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map

@friendlyfishde