2024-05-02 17:43:38
Berlin is incorrigible. It is what it is and stays that way even when great opportunities for change arise. Whether you consider this to be strength of character or stubbornness may be a matter of taste. However, this is not always good for good taste. When Berlin’s top gastronomy experienced a spectacular upswing in the second decade of the new millennium and the culinary valley of tears suddenly became the promised land of gourmet food, when the Michelin stars rained down on the capital like gold on the Sterntaler girl, the vast majority of Berliners stayed loyal to their Nibelungen currywurst and left it to the tourists to fill the gourmet restaurants.
Now the global enthusiasm for Berlin has cooled down, wealthy tourists prefer to go to Lisbon or Copenhagen, the number of flights to Berlin has halved compared to pre-pandemic times – and top restaurants are now realizing how thin the ice has been to pirouette on. There is no house in the capital that is not struggling because a golden decade of gourmandism has left as deep a mark on the Old Berlin palate as a footprint in the sand of the Brandenburg region.
The kitchen as a community
Billy Wagner is one of the busiest, brightest and smartest top restaurateurs in Berlin and not one of those people who throw in the towel so easily. Nine years ago he opened “Nobelhart & Dirty” with his chef Micha Schäfer, caused a sensation with his radical regionalism, quickly became an internationally known address and didn’t have to worry about his livelihood or his reputation. But with the crisis, sales have fallen by a fifth, even major events such as the International Tourism Exchange hardly have an impact on reservations, and since there is no improvement in sight, Billy Wagner took action.
Thought leader in top Berlin gastronomy: Billy Wagner sees the future of his industry in sophisticated simplification.Classy hard & dirty
He halved the prices and the number of courses on the menu, introduced double occupancy, abandoned the elaborate for the more practical and transformed his kitchen into a kind of culinary commune. Every chef now cooks every item, everyone shares the shifts of the abolished dishwashers, no one works more than 40 hours, and a strict code of conduct ensures respectful interaction. And the workforce, together with the guests and the producers, now forms a triumvirate of equality in which no one is taken advantage of or taken advantage of. Wagner calls this new concept “value-centered gastronomy”, with which he not only wants to overcome the chronic shortage of staff in the catering industry, but also create a new awareness among guests of the value of good food, from its production to its preparation.
Snack in the star restaurant
But otherwise everything remained the same. The cooking is still “brutally local”, eating with dim lighting at a huge counter that surrounds the open kitchen on three sides, playing chill-out music from real records, where the needle sometimes gets stuck in a groove for minutes. And the mood among the employees is still as enthusiastic as ever, except that now they no longer follow the usual protocol of top cuisine from amuse-gueule to petit four, but instead serve a snack to start the evening: a young woman carries two earthenware pots with her Double cream butter to our place. One has matured for two months, the other has been in its pot since October 28, 2021 and now tastes as pleasant as a mild, soft cheese. For snacking, there is also rye sourdough bread, a smoked sausage, chicory with rose verjuice, feta with fennel seeds and pointed cabbage julienne with caraway – without exception, excellent products that you could also get in almost similar quality in a good Bavarian tavern.
Few components, clear tastes, no frills: This is what the new kitchen at “Nobelhardt & Dirty” looks like.Nobelhardt & Dirty
The new brutal simplicity of “Nobelhart & Dirty” then continues seamlessly: with a raw radish accompanied by nothing other than gourd, horseradish, béchamel sauce and breadcrumb mousse; and with a risotto made from white beans, which makes do with lovage and raw milk cheese from the Heggelbach farm community on Lake Constance as an entourage. This is maximum purism bordering on culinary asceticism, but nevertheless corresponds exactly to Billy Wagner’s avant-garde idea of sophistication, which focuses solely on the straightforward, unadulterated presentation of the best basic product.
Fresh lamb tastes so good
With the chicken breast of the well-known breeder Lars Odefey, who gives his animals more than 100 days to grow, minimalism is taken to the extreme: This extra course actually consists of nothing more than two strips of the breast, which are covered with a wonderfully dense layer Glazed chicken jus and sprinkled with roasted coriander seeds. The rump and shank of lamb are a little more colorful thanks to leeks, wild garlic and an extremely intense lamb jus bound with onions, although this plate is also far from a hidden gem of flavors. But it gives people for whom fine dining is not their daily bread a fabulous idea of how good lamb can taste when it is not brought in frozen from New Zealand.
Billy Wagner calls his new cuisine solid, authentic and not at all intellectual, and it shouldn’t cause anyone any complications because the world is already complicated enough. And in his opinion, the number of people who enjoy four-hour evenings in restaurants is decreasing dramatically anyway. So after two hours we say goodbye with an oat sponge cake, which thanks to the compote and sorbet made from pickled blueberries has wonderfully preserved the aroma of the past summer, breathe the currywurst-filled Berlin air outside and sincerely hope that the “Nobelhart & Dirty” is on its way into the future, but has not found the ideal route for top gastronomy.
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