After the great success of the first cat restaurant, a second location is to be opened in Leipzig in April. They have vegan food and a cute Greek cat gang.
First of all, a clarification: cat restaurant does not mean that there are cats to eat here. On the contrary, says Anne Rüter and laughs: “All our dishes are vegan.”
Rüter and her partner Robin Gebauer have been running the cat café “Katzentempel” on Johannisplatz in Leipzig for four years – with resounding success.
“Mercilessly fully booked” in Leipzig
The concept is easy to understand: coffee, cake, good company, vegan food and a whole gang of fluffy kitties hugging chair legs and pausing on thick cushions in the shop window, purring. What the guests want here is clear: smacking cats.
“We’ve been fully booked for a long time, especially at the weekend,” says Rüter. “We had to send people away all the time.” And that’s why the two decided to open a second location.
It is now in the middle of the city centre, on Katharinenstraße, opposite the picture museum. And there is a new concept: “We started out as a cat café, but are now going more into restaurant mode with sandwiches, bowls and burgers, all vegan, of course.”
Home for five street cats
The new “Cat Temple” is larger than the old one and can accommodate around 80 guests. And while pedigree cats also roam around in the “Cat Temple” on Johannisplatz, five street cats are to find a new home in the city center at the start.
Gebauer and Rüter discovered the five little strays under a garbage container while vacationing in Crete, took them to Leipzig and hired them as a team for the new “Cat Temple”. Strictly speaking, the kitties work in the home office because they also live in the “cat temple”, confirms Rüter.
branches throughout Germany
Incidentally, the “Katzentempel” is a franchise company with branches in Munich, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Rosenheim, Regensburg – but there will only be two branches in Leipzig in the future.
Rüter and Gebauer are already hard at work in their new restaurant. The opening will be delayed a little, says Rüter, “because of the war and Corona”. But things should definitely start here in April – and then there will be double crawling, cuddling and caressing in Leipzig.
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