Styled by Berghain’s interior designer, Tin Tin does feel ‘clubby’ in a very Berlin way: the huge expanses of various shades of grey; the bare walls (save for a large minimalist painting by one of the owners); the industrial furniture (blocky, cement-coated tables, heavy black chairs and the huge original radiators kept ‘raw’); the dainty bulbs dangling from black cables, artfully arranged in galaxies of dim lights that sparkle in the room’s great grey sky. The space is actually the result of the – nearly seamless – merging of two spaces across adjacent buildings, numbers 39 and 40. The menu is almost as minimal as the beats that emanate from the sound system: you could call it ‘imaginative Euro with a heavy Turkish/Mediterranean influence’.

Though it’s hard to imagine before tasting it, the celery-cream-coffee soup (€3.80) was a delicate, foam-topped taste-bud pleaser (as opposed to a stomach-turning mishmash). Our other starter, a ratatouille-like stew of aubergines and cherry tomatoes topped with pine nuts, was palatable but on the oily side. By the time the mains arrived - fried sardines on couscous with a yoghurt sauce (“Hansi Teller”, €9.20) and entrecôte on a slice of German bread with a superior tomato salad (“Rind auf Brot”, €14.20) - the music had switched to what sounded like 1970s soul (no techno dogmatism there). Both plates were generous in size; too bad the sardines were missing the kick of a suitable accompaniment (the couscous lacked real flavour). In contrast, the perfectly prepared cut of beef was the food highlight of the night, and the tomatoes so well-dressed they tasted delicious even at high winter – a real feat. Dessert was unexpectedly sophisticated and toothsome: a lime parfait with a deliciously runny chocolate cake, and homemade profiteroles filled with the “filling of the day” – on this occasion, love it or hate it, banana (€5.90).

Usually the food at a ‘club/restaurant’ is an afterthought, secondary to atmosphere and all-round coolness. But at Tin Tin, style and substance are served up in equal (and generous) measure.