Roland Trettl meets top chef Christian Jürgens

Roland Trettl meets Christian Jürgens

Shaking hands with the “Burg” chef

Christian Jürgens is the chef at Burg Wernberg in the Upper Palatinate in Bavaria. Anyone who thinks that has a provincial ring to it will soon see at the “Ikarus” that the man is perfection itself

The first greeting from the kitchen is like a clip round the ear. The head waiter from Christian Jürgens’ “Restaurant Kastell” says something about four kinds of bread. I stare in amazement at mini works of art which have been prepared with incredible precision: a “radish” roll, a chive roll with Bündner Fleisch, a salmon roll with wasabi butter, a slice of goose liver with apple and brioche. I have a bad feeling about this. This is what I am supposed to be cooking with him at the “Ikarus”! As a professional myself, I can see that Jürgens’ cooking style means work, work and more work.

Before I am able to feel really sorry for myself, a constant fire of named delicacies as aperitifs is directed at me: fresh oysters with sea water foam, watercress soup with roasted frogs’ legs, pulpo ragout with potato foam and sardine chip, then a warm oxtail terrine with a carpaccio of pigeon breast – and that all comes under the heading of “amuse-gueule”. This is someone who is pulling out all the stops, demonstrating before we even get to the first course that his two Michelin stars are not nearly enough for him.

Christian Jürgens is one of the “crazy guys” that one Heinz Winkler and my great teacher Eckart Witzigmann sent out into the world. Jürgens learned with both of them, and the influence of both is clearly evident, in terms of what arrives on the plate and also what goes on behind the scenes in the kitchen, where among the extremely youthful team his strict regimen encounters an enthusiasm bordering on religious fervour. Christian himself describes his cooking as tending towards the conservative: “If I bind something with agar-agar, I consider I am being quite daring.” It is quite true: basically, his cooking is classical. The local saddle of venison on creamed Savoy cabbage with cranberry and pepper sauce is a dish that might be served in any village restaurant, although certainly not at this level of quality. But when Christian Jürgens prepares red mullet and avocado in two ways, or line-caught mackerel with broad beans and escabèche sauce, it is clear that he can do very modern cooking: everything has its own form. Whatever he does, the quality is outstanding.

This is even more pleasing to me because Christian has helped me out of a real mess. I had him in mind as a guest cook in 2009. We had planned to have a Parisian guest cook for this February, but somehow we didn’t quite warm to each other, in spite of all our efforts. The chemistry just wasn’t right, and although all the preparatory work had been done – getting to know him, cooking with him, doing photos, printing folders – I pulled out. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that if that mutual sympathy isn’t there, the guest chef concept just won’t work. It is not simply a matter of copying what each other does.

But now I was minus one chef. In desperation I rang Christian. He immediately said yes and offered a date in the near future. And he added that I could rely on him absolutely: “This telephone conversation is as good as shaking hands on it.” The “handshake” then began with an initial evening meal to get to know each other, in his restaurant at Burg Wernberg in the Upper Palatinate. I was totally bowled over, right up to the generous slab of cake, of truly gigantic proportions, that I was given as a parting gift from the kitchen after (!) I had eaten two desserts.

But the real surprise came on the following day, when I entered Jürgens’ kitchen. I know that the conditions a chef works in are not necessarily of any great interest to restaurant guests; after all it is only the result that counts. But for me as a professional it makes a difference whether or not a chef is able (as at the Ikarus) to work in a high tech kitchen full of super-modern equipment. Christian’s workplace is at the other end of the scale. Never have I seen a place so cramped, so full of nooks and crannies, so utterly without regard for all work sequences, so downright small. When I pause to consider that Christian, in addition to his “extreme cooking” also has to cook for the “normal” Burg restaurant service, including parties of all kinds, I simply cannot understand how he does it. “I put my soul into my cooking,” says Christian, and there is just no other way to account for it. As a human being and a master chef, the man was quite simply astonishing. For the first time, I felt gratitude towards that Parisian chef.

Interview recorded by Christoph Schulte • Fotos: Red Bull Photofiles / Herbert Lehmann