Top chef Claudia Poletto at Restaurant Ikarus

May 2010 at Restaurant Ikarus: Cornelia Poletto

Italy comes to Hamburg

"Poletto", Hamburg, Germany

How can you fit 301,338 square kilometres of Italy into 145, Eppendorfer Landstraße, Hamburg? With a deep-seated love of southern cooking! At Restaurant Poletto, Cornelia Poletto brings together the south and northern Germany. The result is delicate compositions, with a Mediterranean emphasis, from fresh, seasonal produce.

The native of Hamburg grew up in a family of doctors and pharmacists. Poletto also wanted to follow in her family's traditional footsteps and become a vet. The only problem was her school grades and the homemade cakes, which even then hit the right culinary nerve. She devoted herself to her culinary strengths and completed a catering course. The tough years as an apprentice started under top chef Heinz Winkler in Aschau, Bavaria. In the team of 27 men and one woman, she not only learnt the art of making sauces, but also how to counter the wisecracks from her male colleagues. Training completed, Poletto moved to Restaurant Anna & Sebastiano, which has since closed. There she worked as sous-chef under Anna Sgroi, who taught her the niceties of Italian cuisine. Her passion for the south went so deep that in 1999 she lent her surname an Italian flavour. The missing ingredient was sommelier Remigio Poletto, who turned Cornelia Diedrich into an Italian.

The search for their perfect restaurant started in 2000. In Hamburg she found an Italian restaurant whose glory days were long since past. It took three months of renovations before the first dish left the kitchen of Restaurant Poletto in October of the same year. Two years later, the top chef received that which every chef dreams of – her first Michelin star. The Hamburg girl earned it with homemade ravioli filled with liquid pecorino, petit pois and candied Amalfi lemons, as well as poached fillet of sturgeon in cacciucco broth, with saffron fennel and potato and olive mash. Poletto's menu reflects more of these unique combinations, where sweet temptations such as warm plum tart, with Amaretto zabaglione and coffee ice-cream rubs shoulders with rosemary and honey parfait, with marinated flat peaches and sweet pesto.

The next seven years proved that the first Michelin star, in 2002, was not a one-off, as one star regularly followed another. In the 2006/2007 edition of the Gault-Millau guide, Poletta's creations were awarded 16 out of 20 points. The gourmet expressed his thanks with three and a half out of a possible five Fs and regular nomination as one of the 10 best foreign restaurants in Germany. The Hamburger can certainly look forward to another superb second helping.

No Poletto on our television screens has been unthinkable since 2003. She first appeared on NDR television and ZDF on "Kerners Köche", or "Kerner's Cooks". In 2007 NDR developed a new cookery programme format with the top chef – Poletto's Cookery School. Pupils have included the former Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein Heidi Simonis, and presenters such as Markus Lanz and Barbara Schöneberger. And if she's not in the TV studio or restaurant, she will doubtless be writing her third cookery book, already having two under her belt: "Alles Poletto" (All Poletto) and "Polettos Kochschule" (Poletto's Cookery School).

"Really good food can only come from really good produce." That's Cornelia Poletto's philosophy. Italian temperament meets the chilly North in her kitchen. The Hamburger's secret is the combination of regional food with southern cooking tradition. She is one of the few top women chefs who can call a Michelin star her own. Of 216 chefs, just five are women and this accolade is worth defending – day after day.