Is this ordinary city in Germany really an Asian food hotspot? Ja!

Dusseldorf might not be the first place you’d think of to sample award-winning Asian cuisine, but you’d be wrong. Prathap Nair explores its surprising culinary roots

Takumi, one of numerous eateries in Dusseldorf’s Little Tokyo (Dusseldorf Tourismus/Sabrina Weniger)

Düsseldorf wears only one of its personalities on its sleeve – the German one. But the other, hidden in plain sight, is just as rewarding. Between its art galleries and museums, this city on the Rhine in west Germany offers a curious blend of European culture and Asian hospitality, thanks to a diverse demographic that’s 20 per cent international.

Leafy parks, riverside promenades, whimsical architecture with a healthy mix of the traditional and the modern, the trademark needle of a TV tower spire reaching skyward, and even a charming castle in pastel pink – it bears all the hallmarks of a successful mid-size German city. But just under Düsseldorf’s glossy veneer of orderliness, customary of German planning, there’s just enough room for organised chaos.

When I moved to the city in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I was struck by the 26 (and counting) museums and upwards of 100 galleries and ateliers, an opera house, a concert hall and a ballet. One week I saw a Claudia Schiffer-curated exhibition about Nineties fashion photography; the next, I strolled into a chic brutalist building that houses the city’s prominent museum, K20, to see a Piet Mondrian retrospective. For a city of its size with a population of a little more than half a million, it seemed culturally very rich.