Not all heroes wear muscle, fur and heavy swords. Sometimes it's enough to spend a winter lonely on the couch. Sometimes it takes ingenuity, agility and perseverance. This week, we recognize three local businesses that have been hit particularly hard by the lockdown. Either because they were very young, very traditional or simply too small for a crisis of this size: the Pinsa Manufaktur in Stuttgart, the Tanzfabrik in Berlin and the Kreuzberg lunch cafe Schnittchen.
#MyLockdownHero #ThankYou
Bessem Lamari, founder of Pinsa Manufaktur, has dedicated an entire restaurant to the inimitably crispy, fluffy delicacy. Opening only in September 2019, Pinsa Manufactory was among the local businesses hit hardest by the lockdown. In the midst of construction, with no financial reserves, no delivery business and no regular customers. But Bessem and the Pinsa have made it - thanks to the irresistibly delicious Pinsa and their now countless fans who go to bat for them. For example, through a donation-funded solidarity campaign. Together with two other Stuttgart restaurants, Pinsa Manufaktur supplied the doctors and nurses of the Covid ward at Stuttgart Hospital in January.
The inner values. Both are in principle occupied dough pancakes. But the Pinsa is wonderfully old-fashioned in its production. The dough is prepared from a mixture of different flours - rice flour is included, soy flour, sourdough, lots of water and, above all, lots and lots of time. The pinsa is allowed to chill in the refrigerator for up to five days, slowly forming clouds, before it is put into the hot oven, devotedly brushed with sugo. The result: crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside. And extremely digestible.
By the way: For the Pinsa Manufactory, the "lockdown" is currently not yet over. The guest room is small. With the current restrictions, reopening would not be economical. That's why you can still pick up or have the Pinsa delivered at the moment. You are from Stuttgart? Try Pinsa.
There is more to our local life than restaurants. They all belong to it - the pharmacy offering advice, the wacky fantasy bookshop, the flashy beauty salon, but also all the yoga, fitness, and dance studios that get us moving every day. Like the restaurants, they were the first to close at every lockdown and are now the last to reopen. How many will ultimately survive is an open question. The Dance Factory exemplifies all the places of movement that stumbled with the lockdown.
Founded in 1978 in the style of the "roaring 70s," it danced, performed, celebrated and slept in the workshops of a former lamp factory. Initiators: a motley collective of artists and students with a holy mission: away with tutu and pointe shoes - clear the stage for wild experiments. And - mission accomplished: For over 40 years now, the Tanzfabrik has enjoyed an international reputation as a stage and training institute. It has - as intended - given contemporary dance a home in Berlin, and to all others who like nothing better after work than to hop, twirl, swing and jump through vast factory halls in a contemporary and wild way.
The dance factory is a real tanker of the offline world. It has had a much harder time joining the lockdown trend to online classes via conferencing tools than many cutting-edge fitness service providers. But in the end, it has successfully overcome the digitalization threshold and made it into the living rooms of its fans with tolerable audio quality via online booking systems, video platforms and co. The dance factory has survived - not all the artists - but the place.
With the Cafe Schnittchen in the Großbeerenkiez, the Irish Maureen Crowley had fulfilled a dream almost ten years ago and created a kind of public living room in her neighborhood. With cozy sofas, dainty kidney tables and real books on the windowsill. She serves - slices, of course, homemade lemonade, but also Irish and local treats. Her spaetzle, for example, are highly regarded even by real Swabians and were highly sought-after takeaway food at the neighborhood home-school office lunch. Still, Cafe Schnittchen almost didn't survive the lockdown.
With the closing of the surrounding offices and the Theater am Halleschen Ufer, the Schnittchen had lost all of its lunch business. The Berlin radio station stepped in. As part of a donation-funded Corona Instant Help program, it symbolically ordered 500 cups of coffee and 500 pieces of cake for a total of €2750. #ThankYou #BerlinerRundfunk
Maureen now wonders. Will people return to the offices at all. And if so, will they find their way back to her at the lunch table. Everything depends on that for her now. Let's go! Have lunch at Maureen's!
#MyLockdownHero #Thanks
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