Es is a game with open cards, probably the most open in all of German top cuisine, a game without trickery and cheating, without secrecy and bravado. In his Hamburg restaurant, Thomas Imbusch quickly turned the kitchen inside out and placed it in the middle of the restaurant: a monumental Molteni stove full of copper casseroles and Le Creuset cocottes as the centerpiece, framed by work surfaces, cooling compartments and the passport under one Dozen brass lamps.
Everything is prepared, cooked and served here before the eyes of the guests, no action is hidden, no plate appears as a deus ex machina from the kitchen shelf. So it’s only logical that the boss, who never minces his words himself, gave his restaurant the purist name “100/200” – because the water boils at one hundred degrees and the oven is heated to two hundred degrees.
Quality and beauty of the basic products
Before the menu begins, its ingredients are revealed. At the bar, we are shown the vegetables of the evening in a display case. Only then does Imbusch reveal his understanding of the five basic tastes with five attunements: smoked onions and umbel represent sweet, celery and rhubarb represent sour, pointed cabbage and olives represent salty, radishes and cocoa beans bitter, dike cheese and celery oil umami. Now our palates and Imbusch’s are in sync – which is necessary as there are no adjustments to the menu – and we’re ready to go.
With cucumber, beetroot, rose water, sour milk ice cream, marigolds and buttercups, we celebrate the cornucopia of summer freshness together, while we get together with roasted zucchini, aubergines and peppers for a vegetarian barbecue party on a mild summer evening. And with the tomatoes with cherry, pistachio, marzipan and bronze fennel, we finally know what this is about: celebrations of clarity and simplicity with a minimal, never adulterating refinement that has no other purpose than to make us aware of the quality and beauty of the basic products close.
Thomas Imbusch is a chef with heart and soul, head and mind. He comes from a small town in the Oldenburger Münsterland, worked as a dishwasher in good kitchens while he was still at school, bought the “Feinschmecker” with his communion money because the three-star chef Christian Bau adorned the title, learned the classic cookery trade at the Parkhotel in Bremen and then actually made it into his idol’s kitchen. He spent two tough years with the merciless perfectionist on the Moselle and then knew exactly what he wanted: his own restaurant where everyone feels comfortable – cooks, waiters, guests – because everyone shares the conviction that there is nothing more elementary, There is nothing more important in life than good food.