Brückenstern

Brückenstern is a 45-seat music café in Hamburg, pairing concerts with a restaurant table setting and a summer garden. Its scale shapes the experience: this is a close-range room built for listening while people eat, drink and settle in. The strongest calling card is its persistence beside the Sternbrücke construction site, where proprietor Kwesi Asiama has kept the concert stage active amid a rebuilding project that displaced much of the surrounding club life.

A café renamed for connection

Kwesi Asiama took over the former Pepper in 2008 with a business partner, then gave the place its current name. Asiama, who came to Hamburg from Abetifi in Ghana and worked in hospitality before the purchase, framed Brückenstern around connections between Ghana, Germany and the many communities of the Schanzenviertel. The German Music Information Centre also records a 2008 opening, Asiama as owner, and an annual programme of around 80 concerts, chiefly blues and jazz, alongside poetry slams. In July 2026, NDR found guitarist Lucas Etcheverria playing a Brückenstern set with Intelligent Design while the new Sternbrücke was being installed outside. A hand-made sign on the construction fence directed people to the still-open music pub; the report described Brückenstern as the last remaining club at the bridge at that point. That night gives the venue’s present-day character a concrete shape: a working neighbourhood room continuing its programme through a major interruption on its doorstep.

The room, the programme, the fit

Expect a compact restaurant-bar format with a concert stage, tables for 45 guests and a garden for warmer months. Booking begins through the venue’s performance-request form, fitting a programme that mixes invited acts with participatory formats. Jazz and improvised music lead the bill, with Choro, blues, singer-songwriters, open mics, jam sessions and occasional poetry events widening the frame. A local profile also describes corner sofas and a living-room feel, useful context for listeners who value close proximity to performers over a conventional club-floor setup.