Top chef Marcus G. Lindner as Guest chef in the Ikarus

February 2011 at Restaurant Ikarus: Marcus G. Lindner

The art of precision cooking

"If you cook brilliantly, you can get away with anything", says Austrian Marcus G. Lindner, chef de cuisine at the award-winning restaurant Mesa in Zurich. With innate sensitivity he combines the most widely varying flavors to conjure diverse, sensuous and imaginative Mediterranean-influenced compositions, with an incomparable precision. Many therefore regard him as the best chef in Zurich.

After finishing school, Lindner attended the Landesberufsschule für das Gastgewerbe Schloss Hofen, a hotel and catering college in Lochau, where he trained for three years as a professional chef. He completed his apprenticeship at the St. Leonhard restaurant in Feldkirch. His career started when he trained in his home village with Max Dick, who passed on to him knowledge of Viennese and Austrian cuisine and recommended that when he qualified, he should work in Switzerland to gain a more in-depth knowledge of classic French cuisine. No sooner said than done. After three years working at the renowned Hotel Post in Lech, Lindner moved to Switzerland and for the next five years worked at the Hotel Victoria Jungfrau in Interlaken, followed by a further three years at the Parkhotel in Gstaad, where he cooked his way to 16 Gault Millau points.

After further stints at famous restaurants in Germany and Switzerland, Lindner made his way back home in May 2004, to the 5-star Interalpen Hotel Tyrol in Tyrol. At the same time, in Zurich, Mesa's owner Linda Mühlemann was looking for a new chef de cuisine. She is a passionate hostess and also a chef. When Mühlemann chose Marcus G. Lindner, she had to work hard to persuade him to leave his homeland again for Switzerland. In 2006, her efforts bore fruit and Lindner moved to Mesa in Zurich as chef de cuisine.

Lindner cooks in his highly individual style at the restaurant, which achieves the balancing act between classic furnishings and simple elegance. "When you work in the luxury hotel industry, you're always supposed to offer an alternative to the establishment's other culinary offerings. It's different at Mesa. It's a little gem of a restaurant. Here I cook more authentically. I can be myself.”, says Lindner.

But what is Lindner like when he's being "himself"? He’s a craftsman who demands of himself that he deliver the best possible performance, which he does with a precision timed to the second, not the minute. It's not really surprising that he was also attracted to the idea of a career as a clockmaker. Every evening he and his team thus conjure onto diners' tables menus timed to the second. He doesn't hold back from combining or offering the seemingly impossible, either. A chef who constantly reinvents his cooking style and still remains true to his highly individual style. The result: highly creative dishes such as red mullet, rare breed pork, fennel and absinthe, or John Dory, rhubarb, duck liver and asparagus, or char, peas, quail's egg and balsamic vinegar, or veal sweetbreads, vanilla, goose liver and celery. A less gifted cook might not succeed in combining the widely disparate elements into an uncompromising whole. Lindner's abilities, though, power the ingredients into an intense and transparent overall picture, creating new associations that the individual components otherwise don't possess.

Connoisseurs attest to Catalan influences in his cuisine, which Lindner confirms. "Mediterranean cuisine influenced me very early on, because it won me over with its honesty. They are mostly simple preparations focusing on the product, treating it with respect and taste."

Of course, his culinary skills and precision have not escaped restaurant critics. After he cooked up 16 Gault Millau points in 2007, Lindner reached 18 points in 2010. In 2008, he was awarded a Michelin star.

Lindner is a skilled craftsman, who loves combining wildly different flavors and ingredients, and he doesn't shy away from serving ingredients such as pig's snout or calf's head, because, "If you cook brilliantly, you can get away with anything!"