The Berlin pastry dream continues! As well as its plethora of vegan doughnuts, Berlin now has enough vegan pastry shops that we couldn’t reasonably visit them all on a quick weekend visit. It’s a tough old life! The Sanctuary is an Italian bakery which is all vegan, and it was really good. The pastries were big and delicious. We were there for opening time on a Sunday morning, and people were queuing out the door within ten minutes – it’s popular, and justifiably so.

Here’s the full counter at opening time – or at least, the sweet side. It seemed like the savoury offerings were a little slower to be brought out, because who wouldn’t want a nice sweet treat to start the day. As you can see, there were lots of tempting bakes to choose from. This is precisely how I like to start my days!

I tried the cannoncino pistachio – a crispy pastry roll filled with pistachio cream, and the girella nocciola, a bigger pastry filled with hazelnut and chocolate cream. Dr HH tried the girella pistachio (as above, but with the pistachio cream inside) and a Danese (blueberry Danish) – he enjoyed the fresh fruit on that one. The creams were all light and flavoursome, and the pastry was very good but not quite the crispest and flakiest we’ve had (even in Berlin). It’s nice to be able to be so discerning about vegan pastries these days! I’ve been vegan for more than ten years now, and agonising over how to rank vegan bakeries is a problem I’m very pleased to have.

We also got some savoury snacks to take away for the bus ride back to Prague. Neither of us could resist the cacio e pepe focaccia, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it kept the flavours of cheese and pepper – I was expecting it to be much milder than it really was. It was a good bake as well. There were quite a few savoury pastries to try, but we were a bit cautious about how they would travel, so this was a safe and convenient option, but I’d like to explore a bit more what they’ve got.

Overall, I found the pastries not quite as good as at FREA Bakery, but still very good indeed. A drawback of The Sanctuary is that there is not a lot of seating, just a couple of tables and seats at a bar, which is quite cramped. Also, in true Italian style, the drinks menu was quite coffee heavy with no chai latte on offer, which is a disappointment for me personally. So you may need to plan to get your goods to go, but you certainly won’t regret a visit.