Roland Trettl meets Heinz Reitbauer & Thomas Dorfer

Why roam so far afield?

This time, true to the saying "Why roam so far afield when the best is on your doorstep", gourmet expert Roland Trettl is out and about in his chosen home, Austria.

Travelling is educational, but no-one has ever claimed that it's necessary to travel far. Instead of London and Paris, a person from Salzburg can go to Vienna for a change, and the Wachau region's just as good as Provence or Liguria.

Aficionados of the Hangar-7 guest chef concept know that August, Salzburg Festspiele month, belongs to the Ikarus team. Chef de cuisine Martin Klein, sous chefs Jörg Bruch and Tomi Dananic, and patissier Christoph Lindpointner are indispensable cornerstones of the concept that is unique in the world. Every year they look forward to "their" month more and more. But this time we want to share it once more – with colleagues from Austria, whose skill is undoubtedly superb but who, because they are part of the scenery, so to speak, easily run the risk of being overlooked by our guest chef concept.

Thomas Dorfer from Wachau and Heinz Reitbauer from Vienna are amongst the country's absolute gastronomic elite. They are also united by very special working conditions, which are more associated with chaos and discord than top international cuisine. Reitbauer's family is an Austrian gastronomic institution, with shoes so big that the best advice to a son would be to not even try to fill them. And the circumstances are even more extreme in the case of Thomas Dorfer. He was on his way to super-chef Alain Ducasse in Paris, but then, motivated by love, chose to join the brigade of the person who later became his mother-in-law – no less a person that Lisl Wagner-Bacher, the grande dame of award-winning Austrian cuisine, but there was still a happy ending. The fact that Gault Millau crowned Thomas chef of the year in 2009 is testament to internal family emancipation. And if you taste his legendary beef rump ravioli, you also understand his culinary tightrope walk between the classical repertoire and independent interpretation. The ravioli, filled with rump of beef, sits on creamed spinach, scattered with diced beef stock and horseradish jelly, and is redolent of rural idyll.

Things are more citified in Vienna's "Steirereck". Merely the furnishings of the restaurant located in Vienna's Stadtpark have something cosmopolitan about them; I would simply call it "modern Baroque". Heinz Reitbauer stands in the midst of this setting, so decidedly modest that you constantly think your leg is being pulled. I would like to illustrate his courage with a vegetarian dish – julienne of carrots and purple beta-sweet carrots are wrapped in strips of kohl rabi and presented with carrot vinaigrette, apple-vanilla chutney and dressed with fresh apple-basil juice. Sensational! Only a butcher's dog would still be thinking of meat.

Heinz Reitbauer and Thomas Dorfer will each present a 7-course menu at Hangar-7, so we'll have to really stretch ourselves with the Ikarus menu. Life is a battle, and you obviously don't need to travel to learn that – you just have to stay in Austria.

Recorded by Christoph Schulte. Photos: Helge Kirchberger / Red Bull Hangar-7