Roland Trettl meets top chef Horst Petermann

Roland Trettl meets Horst Petermann

Old-school free thinker

His cuisine is highly cultured:
Horst Petermann cooks classically, but with breathtaking perfection.
A must for "Hangar-7".

Why Horst Petermann? Why invite a chef to "Hangar-7" who has clung to classic cuisine in conservative Switzerland for more than 25 years? That's easy to answer – Switzerland is up there again, at least during June when it is joint organiser with Austria of the European Football Championships. And seriously – I can't pass by 64-year old Horst Petermann's "Kunststuben" in Küsnacht. I'm standing in Horst Petermann's apartment, the native Hamburger wants to explain something to me and opens a cupboard in order to do so, and suddenly Trettl goes very quiet. I'm a fashion victim. But it's fascinating when someone shows me a shoe cupboard containing around 150 of the most unusual styles, all neatly stored on shoe trees. Clearly, if Horst Petermann does something, he does it properly. And the same is true of his personal life, as he is firmly and lovingly married to wife Iris and has an equally longstanding and affectionate association with friend Rico. Iris is in charge of front-of-house at "Kunststuben", and Rico is the sous-chef. It works, even under the merciless stress of a top-class restaurant.

If anything impresses me, it's free spirits, their discrepancies, their faults. For decades Horst Petermann's cuisine has been traditionally and strictly classical, not because he believes this to be the one, true cuisine, but just because that's the way he cooks – for which he practically apologises. Horst Petermann is so modest that initially he didn't want to come to "Hangar-7" at all. "I'm not the right person for it. I've been in one place too long."

Petermann has stuck at two stars (since 1984) and a cool 19 Gault-Millau points (since 1989). This chef was a giant when I was still at school. Even today few others have such a mastery of the classic repertoire.

When Petermann's plates come out of the kitchen, you don't get any surprises, for example the souffléd courgette flowers with Dublin Bay prawns on an orange vinaigrette, but there are fireworks as soon as you put your fork or spoon in your mouth. Here is someone who takes flavour to the limit, every time. Only the very great can cook with this intensity. At moments such as these all the avant-garde, including all the fuss and bother about molecular cookery, can go hang. Risotto with preserved lemons and grilled scallops, veal sweetbread Grenadine in an almond crust on artichoke hearts with truffled potatoes, brioche flan with white peaches – all these dishes are reflections of their creator ¬ conservative, pure, and very, very stylish, with a simply enormous power in the background. Horst Petermann is simply one of the most impressive personalities I have ever met, both the chef and the man.

The man can tell stories for hours and place everyone under his spell in the process. How he, who really wanted to be a businessman, was literally beaten into being a chef by his father. How for years he imitated his domineering father with an almost pathological desire for perfection and how he, at first very slowly, but then increasingly determinedly, found his own unique way of living and working.

Anyone who, at 64-years old, stands day-in, day-out in a kitchen that is far too small, with both the saucier and poissonier at a work surface that is just two metres square, either couldn't and can't do anything else, or doesn't want to. Anyone who knows Petermann in private – his valuable art collection, his various homes – quickly realises that Horst Petermann is happy with exactly what he is doing and how he does it.

Just a word or two about the little community of Küsnacht. It's located on what is known as the Gold Coast, on the bottom right shore of Lake Zurich, in the canton of Zurich. Obviously free-thinking traditionalist Petermann will completely unassumingly honour his elected home in his "Hangar-7" menu, with "Zurich Gschnetzeltes", strips of flash-fried veal in a mushroom and cream sauce.

Recorded by Christoph Schulte • Photos: Red Bull Photofiles / Jürg Waldmeier