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Cynthia Barcomi
Cynthia Barcomi was one of the very first members of the Guggenheim Club. And she’s what you’d call a “self-made woman.” With her café and deli, she successfully brought an element of American culinary culture to Berlin—as well as a highly individual philosophy of cooking.
When did you join the Deutsche Guggenheim Club?
I joined right at the beginning, when they first opened. I was so glad that the Guggenheim opened here. I used to live in New York, where I was exposed to a lot of art. I was accustomed to going to the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the MoMA, and the Metropolitan Museum. Here in Berlin, it seemed there were only the National Gallery and a lot of private galleries. Somehow it felt like the Guggenheim was a piece of home for me.
But it’s so different from the Guggenheim in New York.
It is totally different. It’s tiny. But I liked the fact that it was small. I think they use the space very well. When I was living in Kreuzberg, I used to go to all the openings. We were really busy working at that time, and so it was a social thing, it was fun. And I also liked doing the family brunches. The kids loved that. But since we moved away from the city center, it’s not as easy to take part in all the club’s activities.
What was your favorite exhibition?
The Dan Flavin show really surprised me; it was important to see it with someone who could elucidate the work’s background. The exhibitions at the Deutsche Guggenheim are enlightening in different ways, whether it was Jeff Koons, Tom Sachs, or Kara Walker, whose show was a very powerful experience for me. I also found the Jackson Pollock show outstanding, because it went beyond what you’d usually associate with that artist.
You yourself are a pioneer who brought a taste of American culture to Berlin: homemade bagels, cookies, muffins, Devil’s Food cake, New York cheesecake. In 1994 you opened “Barcomi’s,” a café that also sold freshly roasted coffee. And then you opened a second branch in 1997, this time a deli with American food. Both places have remained a huge success to this day. How did the adventure begin?
I moved here as a dancer; I had danced professionally for eight years. I was 29 when my second daughter was born, and I felt I didn’t have to do it anymore. Dancing is demanding. If you aren’t training five to six days a week, you can’t do it. It just wasn’t compatible anymore with the way I wanted to live my life. I had been trained to believe that I could do anything, and so I asked myself, “Well, what would you like to do?” And what came to mind was, “Actually, I’d like to roast coffee beans.” So I went to the National Library here in Berlin—there was no Internet in 1993, and so I took out a lot of books and read everything I could about it. And I thought, “OK, I can do that.” But it was a long process that required a lot of learning, of course.
What was the reaction when you first opened Barcomi’s?
We started with the brownies, the muffins, and the cheesecakes. Those things are pretty banal for Americans, but here in Berlin fifteen years ago, a lot of people had no idea how good American baked goods can be. Food reflects the culture and the surroundings, and America is a huge country with so many different kinds of food. Some people had some notion of what a bagel was, but many didn’t. They’d point at a muffin and say, “I’ll have a bagel.” And I said, well, OK—those are the bagels and those are the muffins. It was very much about teaching people what the food is like—especially the people who work in my kitchen. None of them had ever been to the United States. I don’t have one American working in my kitchen.
Why?
I don’t need Americans in my kitchen. I don’t want anybody working with their own interpretation of what I want. I am a purist. Either it’s my way or the highway.
So you’re not fostering other people’s creativity in your kitchen?
No. If there are going to be new dishes, then I’m the one who develops them, because in the end my name goes on them. It’s a matter of quality. I have to be sure that what people do at Barcomi’s remains purely my interpretation. I like to make things that satisfy people physically and emotionally. One Sunday after I had just gone into business, I was killing myself making all the cakes and muffins and everything. It was eleven in the morning, and I was wondering, “It’s deadly silent, is there nobody upstairs in the café?” But it was completely full, everybody was eating in utter silence. I like to make things that people eat and look at, and then take another bite of while thinking “Mmmmhhmm!”
You are currently working on your third cookbook for Random House. Your first book was about baking, the second one about celebration food, and the current one deals with daily food.
It’s about comfort food, food that tastes even better the next day. It’s not necessarily about slaving away in the kitchen every night.
What’s the philosophy behind your recipes?
You need to have a vision. Or you need to have an excellent recipe that gives you the vision. What’s surprising is that people don’t have a conception of what a cheesecake or a cookie should taste like. Of course they know what they look like, because they’ve seen photographs of them in books, but they don’t really know what they should taste like. And I think there’s a chance in trying to communicate that to someone, to make it accessible. A cookbook is measured by the success that people have when using it. I don’t believe that food has to be incredibly complicated. I enjoy things that are very simple, straightforward, and doable.
Does this also apply to your taste in art?
No, don’t get me wrong, it’s also about achieving a certain level of complexity. You know, there’s something I like in art, something I like in food, and something I like in fashion… it’s the juxtaposition. You need the contrast. I was in London last month, and I saw the Rothko retrospective at the Tate Modern. I knew his work, but I had never paid that much attention to him before the show. But what I did enjoy was the context the paintings were in, for instance the very black one that was in the church in Texas. When you first look at it, you just think it’s black. Then you start to realize the texture behind it and the layering, the spirit, the liveliness within it. It really moved me. I realized how many layers there are, how he creates these intense textures of color. I feel it’s the same with food. Each dish is a combination of flavors, but also of texture, color, and shape. You are the only one who understands what you want to get out of it, what you are trying to communicate, whether it’s a cookie or a scoop of ice cream. As I’ve said, I feel that cooking and baking is all about having a vision. What’s really challenging about doing it is demystifying it.
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