By Sabine Klier
Celebrity landlord Michael Eilhoff was in a coma for three months because of Corona. He had to give up his gourmet restaurant “Lutter & Wegner seit 1811” on Schlüterstraße in Charlottenburg. He fought his way back to life. Now he has opened a mobile café “C&M” on the Summter See north of Berlin.
“I missed the contact with people,” says Michael Eilhoff (64). A year ago he gave up his popular restaurant with a heavy heart. After his severe corona disease in winter 2020, he was no longer able to run his restaurant.
Even today he is still struggling with the consequences of Long Covid: “I’m still not physically fit. I only have half a lung left. After two pneumothorax, one lung lobe failed to inflate.”
Michael Eilhoff cannot carry more than five kilograms, can manage a maximum of eight steps and can only run up to 400 meters. “I can now get by for six hours without extra oxygen,” he says happily.
2021: Michael Eilhoff learns to walk again after his severe corona disease in Beelitz-Heilstätten rehab
He no longer goes to physical therapy. “I have private insurance and have to pay 25 percent of the costs myself. It has become too expensive for me.” His self-therapy means work. With the mobile café, he has fulfilled a dream. He used to twirl the wooden spoon in a 30 square meter kitchen, now his workplace measures 1.60 meters by 2 meters. “There’s even a chair to sit down on,” he says.
He offers eight different types of cake, which he purchases from a manufactory. Together with the Berlin coffee roastery, he has developed a special coffee, the “Summter Bohne”. And soft ice cream is also available on board. “I feel good again. Especially when the kids buy their own ice cream with beaming faces.”
His mobile café, with a ten-year lease, is located on Lake Summter in Mühlenbecker Land (he lives nearby), about 38 kilometers north-east of Berlin. He sets up six acacia wood tables with 24 seats every Friday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
For 27 years he cooked in the “Lutter & Wegner” Photo: Christian Lohse
“My wife Cindy helps set up and take down. Carries the heavy things. Everything else is my thing,” he reveals. Many regular guests from his former restaurant have visited him, such as actor Udo Samel. “But yesterday I reached my limits,” he says. “It was so crowded.”
He wants to keep up his summer operations until October. And he is already making plans for the winter: “Then there will be mulled wine.”