Katja Eichbaum's bird-like hand reaches instinctively for another Marlboro Light. Perched on a bar stool, her slight frame is engulfed in a smart navy business suit. She looks a great deal younger than her 32 years. She smiles nervously as guests arrive, while her husband, Ralf, working behind the bar, offers them red wine.
The restaurant is intimate and inviting. There are around 30 small wooden tables and chairs, a squashy red sofa to sink into and a sleek, modern bar decorated with lanterns that bear the restaurant's name in dusky-pink italics.
ILLUSTRATION MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
A waitress hovers with a tray of appetizers. Morsels of smoked salmon rest on tiny circles of tessellated cucumber. Petals have been carved into plum tomatoes to resemble roses. The attention to detail is impressive. Someone here is extremely serious about their food -- maybe a little too serious, I can't help thinking, as another dish of ornate delicacies sails past from the kitchen.
Welcome to Sehnsucht ("Longing"), in the leafy Tiergarten district of Berlin, aimed specifically at people with eating disorders and run by recovering anorexics. It is a paradoxical concept: a restaurant where the food is cooked by chefs who can't eat, for diners who are obsessed with, well, not eating. It certainly raises some awkward questions, the most practical being: how do they expect to succeed when the customers find the idea of eating so deeply troubling?
"That's the point," said Eichbaum, who was refused funding by her bank and eventually turned to her father for a loan.
"We're here to encourage girls to eat and make it attractive to them again. We want them to get a gradual feel for food, through lovely smells and tastes. It may take time, but it works," she said.
Nothing here is harsh or intrusive. Every aspect of a restaurant that could distress an anxious diner has been addressed. Even the lavatories are sensitively designed with inscriptions on each tile that read "love," "energy" or "courage."
The names of each dish skirt around every anorexic's obsession -- the calories. A rack of lamb is Heisshunge, meaning "ravenous hunger;" a cappuccino creme dessert is Seele -- "soul;" and lobster bisque is simply "Hallo." It does seem a little whimsical, although the hope is that the names will connect with the diners in an emotive way. "Ravenous hunger," for example, is a term loaded with emotional significance for anyone with an eating disorder. Usually an instinct the anorexic tries to suppress, hunger in this context is seen as something to be celebrated and encouraged.
"Yes," Eichbaum agreed, "it's nothing to do with hiding the ingredients or fooling girls into eating more. I have given these dishes names that mean something to me. Hopefully, it will draw them into conversation so I can talk to them about their problems."
One fish dish, she explains, is called "Sparrow" because it reminds her of when she was first admitted to hospital two years ago. She weighed just 45kg.
"People like me were called sparrows because we looked so vulnerable. In those first two weeks, you don't have any contact with the outside world. It is very difficult," she said.
Her approach to anorexia is strikingly candid; the most painful associations of her condition are intimately bound up with this restaurant.
"My favorite dishes will be there," she told me -- hard-boiled eggs in mustard sauce and dumplings. "Those dishes are very personal to me. They remind me of how ill I was. Once I started eating them, I really couldn't stop. I would binge."
Yet this personal approach is essential, it seems, to her recovery.
"Everyone has their own way of dealing with it, and this is mine. In a restaurant you have to face up to these issues every day. I also want to give back, to repay all the help I received when I was sick," she said.
Her chef, Claudia, 22 and still anorexic, hopes that this approach will help her. She only started her treatment in April. How can cooking be a pleasurable pastime for her? At best, it must be a challenging emotional hurdle.
"Ah, no, no. Not at all," she explains. "I have always enjoyed cooking. It's something I've always done. I just can't eat anything I cook."
Eichbaum nods her head.
"It's the same for me. The problem lies in eating it ourselves," she said.
This is a common experience among those with eating disorders, said Barbara Douglas, a psychologist and director of the North West Center for Eating Disorders in Stockport.
"You'll often find in families that the ones with anorexia are the ones who take over the kitchen. It's a truth about starvation -- you will develop an increased interest in food. And one way to deal with that is to give food to other people," she said.
"Also, if you're resisting food and other people are eating, it can make you feel better about yourself -- it's a positive reinforcement of your sense of being in control," she said.
Doesn't that imply that Eichbaum's project is fuelling rather than resolving their obsessions?
"At one level, there is that danger. It would really depend how the restaurant evolves. If it drew young people in and gave them the impression that anorexia is compatible with eating out and normal life, which it isn't, then it could be worrying. If, however, it encourages girls to go out to restaurants and cook for themselves, it could be positive," Douglas said.
Eichbaum looks a healthy size 10, although I can't help notice the telltale reliance on cigarettes, which she lights one after another, and mineral water, which she gulps while refreshing my glass with wine.
"It's a reflex that I still find difficult to fight," she said. "I find myself thinking: `If I can miss the next two meals, then I'll be able to fit into my size 10 trousers.'"
She describes herself as a recovering addict.
"It could have been alcohol or drugs, but it just happened to be food, which I think is the case for a lot of girls. It becomes an obsession that makes you oblivious. I would lose myself in thoughts about eating. I had no sense of time, it became so absorbing. I'd stare out of the window for hours and then I'd realize I had to pick up my daughter from school," she said.
Her anorexia started when she was 15, "around the time my parents got divorced."
"There wasn't any conscious point where I thought, `I'm going to stop eating.' I think it was a way of feeling I was in control and of not having to feel anything," she said.
At one point she was existing on half a yoghurt and maybe an apple each day. Yet she managed to lead a relatively normal family life. From a middle-class background, Eichbaum grew up in Tiergarten and worked as a waitress in local restaurants. Ten years ago, she met her husband and they have a six-year-old daughter, Gioia Maria.
Two years ago, Eichbaum's mother persuaded her to seek help. She agreed more for the sake of her daughter than herself.
"I had no love to give her because I couldn't feel anything. Then, when Gioia was four years old, she'd say, `Oh my God, don't I look fat?' That's when I realized I had to get better," Eichbaum said.
It was during therapy that Eichbaum came up with her idea, and Ralf, also in the restaurant business, is now involved.
Part of the plan is to set up an advice center -- at the moment a chaotic office attached to the restaurant -- which will open in February.
"The aim is to get girls to come here and eventually learn to cook for themselves," Eichbaum said. "We're going to set up a small kitchen area in the center. That's how my therapy helped me. I was taught to prepare my own food and then eat it."
But from a commercial point of view, some critics are unconvinced.
"I don't think Mr [Terence] Conran will be rushing out to open one," said Charles Campion, food critic and compiler of the Rough Guide to London Restaurants.
"Nothing will take off over here that's so incredibly specialist. It's already difficult enough taking a vegetarian out to dinner. And anyway, what does an anorexic's partner order -- a big plate of chips?" he said.
As for the menu names, Campion is dismissive.
"It's a gimmick to sell more dishes. In this case, it's a bit like renaming steak and kidney pie in the hope that a vegetarian will eat it. Will it work? I don't think so," he said.
Critics may scoff at the concept, but how many recent restaurant launchings have garnered quite so much publicity, even before they've opened? Last week, Eichbaum's story made the front page of a German tabloid, and Italian and French newspapers have been quick to catch on -- Tom Aikens and Marco Pierre White would be envious of such attention.
"I really think it will take off: there is such a need for this," Eichbaum said.
Recently, German news reported that star Olympic swimmer Franziska van Almsick battled with anorexia as a teenager; and according to a new survey, the number of those suffering from eating disorders in Germany has tripled over the past decade. It's a similar picture over in the UK.
Chef Claudia insists that cooking in Sehnsucht is already helping her recovery.
"I hadn't eaten a certain pork dish for five years. But people around me were eating it and I tried some and thought, this is quite good. I like it. I'm even learning to eat meat again," she said.
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