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Less is more

More and more top chefs are developing an appetite for a new, down-to-earth form of cooking – and are elevating simplicity to an art form. Instead of lobster, foie gras and truffles, they are putting pumpkin soup on the menu.

COPY/PETER WAGNER
PHOTOS/DITTE ISAGER

He came up with the storyline for the international animated hit film “Ratatouille” and is a major role model for chefs all over the world. But anyone who manages to reserve a highly coveted table at one of top U.S. chef Thomas Keller’s restaurants needs to steel themselves before studying the menu. Instead of the usual prestige dishes of a classic three-star restaurant, they might find mussel stew with bacon being served, or even coffee and donuts. Keller, who runs two of the six top-rated gastronomic establishments in the United States, New York’s “Per Se” and the “French Laundry” in California, likes to transform typical everyday American fare such as macaroni and cheese or cashew butter and jam into an exquisite culinary experience. Until recently, such escapades would have been unthinkable in Europe. Previously, the typical menu of a star-rated restaurant had to feature lobster, caviar or foie gras. The reason? “Because the Michelin Guide expects us to use French gourmet products.” That was the blunt explanation offered by leading chef Dieter Müller as recently as 2007 to explain why, apart from the Königsberger Klopse meat balls with deep-fried capers on his renowned amuse-bouche menu at Schlosshotel Lerbach in Bergisch Gladbach, “unfortunately there aren’t many regional specialties that work in a three-star restaurant.” Quite a lot has changed in the meantime. More and more top chefs all over Europe are overturning the established canon of prestige ingredients. And in their vanguard are Germany’s elite chefs, who are developing a repertoire of home-style cooking capable at the very least of holding its own alongside the inevitable lobster, truffle and foie gras – and prepared with superb craftsmanship: Joachim Wissler from Bergisch Gladbach puts a new slant on lobscouse stew and cheesecake; at “Sonnora” Helmut Thieltge serves a variation on calf’s liver Berlin-style as an amuse-gueule, while Sven Elverfeld from Wolfsburg’s “Aqua” dares to put cod with mixed pickles, sauté potatoes and bacon on the menu. It is important to point out that all these dishes bear little resemblance to the rib-sticking fare on which they are based, and in the hands of these top chefs they are certainly on a par with the haute cuisine old favorites such as lobster thermidor and glazed bloodstewed pigeon with foie gras and Alba truffles. Even though their ingredients seem simpler, they demand at least as much concentration, culinary expertise, and dedication to prepare. Assembling them sometimes even demands much more creativity than simply shaving a 100-euro truffle onto a plate – as Holger Stromberg, chef of the German soccer team, well knows: “Unfortunately, most young chefs coming to work for me still assume that quality means a high price tag. But the more costly the produce they are let loose on, the sloppier they get.” The main reason is the tradition of chasing Michelin stars. The Michelin Guide is an esteemed French institution that focuses squarely on the cuisine and luxury produce of its home country. The gourmet branch of the tire manufacturer has been awarding its legendary stars since 1926, according to the same time-honored model, as a guide to motorists with a penchant for fine food: Three stars means a restaurant is “worth the trip,” two stars means “worth a detour,” and one star rates as “interesting.”

But even in the home of the connoisseur, more and more gastronomes are becoming “gastrosophes” and rejecting all the toil and anguish of pursuing three stars in favor of rediscovering the pearls of traditional cuisine. Some of them have even gone so far as to close down a starred restaurant so that they can start cooking precisely what they want elsewhere, without the pressure. The Breton master of fish and spices Olivier Roellinger gave up his three stars in November 2008, closing down “Les Maisons de Bricourt” in Cancale, France, held by many to be the best fish restaurant in the world, so that he could prepare similar dishes without all the fuss at his second restaurant, “Le Coquillage.” His fellow chef Alain Alexanian sold his star-winning “L’Alexandrin” in Lyon, France, in 2007 and has since been touring regional producers to research old recipes and methods of preparation. He is using this lost and now rediscovered knowledge in his capacity as gastro advisor with an organic slant – for such clients as the “Hi Hotel” in Nice, on the French Riviera, and the public cafeteria of the St. Joseph Clinic in Lyon, which uses exclusively organic produce. “I want to offer the young generation a new, healthy form of cuisine that is in harmony with the environment and affordable.” The latter motive also prompted Alain Senderens to close his gourmet paradise, “Lucas Carton,” after 28 years and to reposition himself with the “Senderens” bistro: “I’ve lost my faith in a system that leaves diners with a bill of 400 euros. From now on I want to do simple cooking, without all the frills. I want a restaurant that is in keeping with the times but which still offers very good quality and has a few surprising innovations.” There is much more to this new desire for simple cuisine than just a resurgence of what the Germans call “luxese,” that modish blend of luxury and asceticism that culminated in tawdry concoctions such as curry wurst with gold leaf and champagne. Rather, the latest penchant for new luxury is more likely to focus on transforming regional products into delicacies using haute cuisine skills: chops instead of Kobe beef, and calf’s head instead of foie gras. For all the differences between their dishes and tastes, one belief above all unites leading gourmands from North Cape to Sicily: Any chef aiming to achieve the very best will need to demonstrate profound background knowledge spanning product qualities, preparation techniques, cooking styles, and flavors in order to create dishes that can easily hold their own against the luxury specialties of the connoisseur’s Mecca, by using honest, ecologically healthy ingredients, which are primarily local produce.

One such chef is at work in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Despite his outright rejection of prestige ingredients, a radical focus on Scandinavian produce and the casual, relaxed decor of the restaurant, devoid of tablecloths or silverware, he has just been awarded two stars: René Redzepi’s “Noma,” voted one of the best eateries in the world in 2009 by the British magazine Restaurant, is one of the hottest tips on the planet for gourmets. This Danish chef, of Macedonian descent, views himself as a pioneer of “new Nordic cuisine” – wild cloudberries instead of tomatoes, rapeseed oil instead of olive oil, truffles from Gotland instead of Périgord, apple vinegar instead of balsamic, reindeer instead of Ibérico pork, served with musk oxen tartar on a bed of moss, or sheep’s milk mousse with sorrel gratin. Writing in the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, Germany’s most famous restaurant critic, Wolfram Siebeck, was blown away by the “incredibly painstaking cooking that is as impressive for the handiwork it requires as for its underlying vision of the future of cuisine.” Redzepi discovered his self-imposed restrictions to be the key to a new concept of luxury: “I found out that there are 150 different types of horseradish here in Denmark. Whoever dines here should know that they’ll only find such food here. Not in Paris, Amsterdam or Berlin. Only in Copenhagen. Top-class cooking is entering a new phase. I like to call it the eco phase. Prior to that, it was all about opulent luxury: truffle pâtés, caviar with champagne sauce – all very heavy, and all very French.” It should be said that for all its rigor, among its one-star restaurants the Michelin Guide has always demonstrated somewhat more latitude towards those choosing to do things their own way. The Hamburg-based Sicilian Anna Sgroi, for instance, earned a Michelin star for her “Anna e Sebastiano” restaurant in 1990 – the first Italian restaurant in Germany to receive that accolade. She now cooks with incomparably fearless purism and authentic produce at her current restaurant “Sgroi.” Lentils, sardines, pumpkins – all ingredients from Italian peasant cooking that Sgroi prepares to sheer perfection and serves with sophisticated but unpretentious style. “In the end, I think I was awarded the star for what you taste with your tongue, and not for fancy arrangements of foams, dabs of sauce, towers and so on. I don’t confuse flavor with pretty looks. For me, luxury is about bringing together three perfect ingredients on a plate.” She has kindred spirits in Annie Féolde, legendary three-star chef at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, and the South Tyrol chef Herbert Hintner, who has held a star for 15 years in the northern Italian village of St. Michael/Eppan “by bringing tradition up to date” – and if that means using bacon, flat bread, and smoked meats as key ingredients, then so be it. Hintner knows full well that “it is illusory to believe we can cover all our requirements just by buying produce from the nearest farm.” The “quest for a soul in our globalized society” that he perceives in his guests also reflects his own yearning for provenance and regionality – in products and recipes alike. While some colleagues are blessed with a bounty of ingredients at their disposal, Sgroi’s local sources are as barren as the landscapes in northern Germany. Very little game is hunted, and the vegetables grown there are too rarely of a quality befitting a starred restaurant. Sgroi would love to obtain the meat for her signature dish, ovenroast kid, from the dyke farms along the North Sea coast, but they prefer to freeze the meat after slaughter for the most part. And “the Germans often let things grow too big. They grow their zucchini huge, by which time they don’t have much taste, and if they rear a kid they let it get too big, and that makes the meat tough.”

Sgroi’s soulmate down in Swabia, Vincent Klink at Stuttgart’s “Wielandshöhe,” has been battling with the same problem for over 30 years. That is what prompted him to create a network of certified organic farmers, and he buys meat from producers such as the “Herrmannsdorfer Landwerkstätten” – among other reasons because they slaughter calves when they reach 80 kilograms, not the usual 120 (see page 71). Klink uses every part of the animal: “I’m not averse to serving up melts as a blanquette of veal. A lot of people still have some notion that there are ‘inferior cuts of meat’. But if an animal is reared in a manner appropriate to its species, every part of it is of high quality. I even have sworn vegetarians coming to me to eat meat once a year.” Klink, like Sgroi, rejects the primacy of the visual: “We are not a temple of gastronomy – in fact, the very expression turns me off. I avoid any ornamentation or artificiality. You always know exactly what product you have on your plate.” Individuals such as Klink, Sgroi and Redzepi would therefore have no reason whatsoever to relinquish their stars. Strictly speaking, they cannot do so anyway. When Alain Senderens wanted to surrender his three-star status, the otherwise rather evasive Michelin Guide editors were moved to comment: “No, Michelin stars cannot be handed back because they belong to Michelin, not the person being honored.” It then promptly admonished the chef in its own inimitable way: Just half a year after opening, the “Senderens” bistro was awarded … two stars.