Restaurant Rutz
Rutz Review at-a-glance
Awards: 3 Michelin stars, 17 Gault Millau
+Innovative cooking unlike anything you will find anywhere else
+Relaxed casual atmosphere adds to the experience instead of taking away
-Some dishes lacked balance and did not work for my tastes
Rating: 92.5
Verdict: Rutz, the newest of German’s three-star restaurants, is also the toughest for me to grade. Completely different than any other three stars in Germany which mostly lean towards French cooking, Rutz is more in the vein of a new Nordic restaurant that focuses on sourcing locally and showing off the bounty of its region. Not only will you not find luxury ingredients like caviar and truffles at Rutz, but you also won’t find Brittany Turbot, Bresse Chicken, and any of the other staples of fine dining on the menu. Instead, everything comes from Germany. Mushrooms foraged a few hours from Berlin, free-range chicken from the chef’s friend, and everything in between. This ups the degree of difficulty considerably but creates a meal that is wholly different from anywhere else. Did I enjoy the food as much as I did the classic cooking of Waldhotel Sonnora or the Japanese-influenced dishes at Victor’s Fine Dining? No, but it was more interesting. Whether interesting means better is a matter of personal preference but regardless, Marco Müller should be applauded for his originality and continuing to push German cuisine forward.
Price I paid: €220
Value: 15/20
Rutz & Marco Müller
Berlin, the capital of Germany and home of counter-culture, art, and a vibrant nightlife scene has never had a three Michelin star restaurant until 2020 when Rutz earned its third star. While Chef’s Table favorite Tim Raue was always the favorite to earn the venerable third star for Berlin, Rutz’s promotion came as a bit of a surprise for the city.
Chef Marco Müller has been the head chef at Rutz since 2003, earning his first star in 2007 which he held for almost a decade when he earned his second star in 2016. While it took Müller a while to go from 1 star to 2, the trip from 2 to 3 was much quicker and took only 4 years. Müller’s cooking style is hard to categorize, the best description I could give it is a German take on new nordic that focuses on local sourcing and interesting flavor combinations.
While most Michelin restaurants are more formal affairs, Rutz is much more casual and the perfect 3 star for Berlin. The restaurant is upstairs from Rutz's more casual wine bar but hardly any more formal - lots of hardwood and no white table clothes are in sight. Service matches the setting, relaxed and friendly without any missteps. Perhaps most importantly, the servers seemed to be genuinely passionate about the food they served and conveying the chef’s philosophy on food. Restaurant Manager Falco Laborious took care of my table most of the night and was one of the better servers I have had anywhere, full stop.
Rutz is a tasting menu-only affair, offering a 6-course menu for €180 and a slightly longer 8-courses for €220 which is in line with the other three stars in Germany. Where Rutz stands apart is its very reasonably priced wine program. Pairings are completely flexible in how many/little you have with each glass priced individually at €13 or €21 if you want the more expensive pairing. In addition to wines by the glass, Rutz has a deep selection of bottles (it is part wine bar after all) a low price for a restaurant of this caliber.
What we ate at Restaurant Rutz
The meal kicked off with some very innovative nibbles, especially by German Michelin standards where I think I see some variation of raw salmon in almost every one of the three stars. On the left is a cucumber-infused broth with char roe and foraged leek which had a nice smokey cook on it. This was nice and bright, really waking up the palate for the rest of the meal and setting you up for the innovative food to come. Also served to start was a trio of crisps including a shaved chicken heart over a butter braised carrot (back left), buckwheat crisp with apple vinegar and marinated kohlrabi (back right), and a leek chip with mountain cheese and herbs (front center). The crisps were all well made and had interesting flavor profiles with the single best taste going to the intensely flavored butter braised carrot.
The first proper course was spring water trout with lardo, bottarga and cauliflower. The trout, farmed by one of the chef’s suppliers a few hours from Berlin, had a nice mild clean flavor. The main texture in the dish came from the fried fish skin - this is a common technique but one I typically dislike as the skin flavor can be quite strong. Thankfully here it was nice and restrained. The cauliflower also paired quite nicely and showed off an impressive bit of knife work but got lost in the dish given its thin slicing. Not quite as good as the trout at Hisa Franko but that is not a fair comparison as Marco Müller does not have the Soča river in his backyard.
Baltic cod wrapped in kombu with elderflower and walnut came next (not pictured), an elaborate presentation of the fish in the kombu table side before going back to the kitchen for plating. This was a smart dish, the tender cod paired well with a butter sauce which was nicely balanced out by the appropriately bitter broccoli stems and tarragon oil. The seafood parade continued with razor clam with green strawberries and wheatgrass which was artfully presented but a tough dish for me to score. The wheatgrass, not my favorite of flavors, was quite dominant and I kept wanting more punch from the green strawberries.
Garum with heirloom tomato and juniper. Garum is an ancient fermented fish sauce used in Roman times that appears to be having a culinary renaissance as I have seen it pop up on a couple of different menus this past year. Here they used a beef garum with an oxheart tomato to mixed results as I found the garum a tad too salty (and I love my salt) and the tomato being of great quality but not working too well with the garum. For me this was interesting but another miss for my palate.
If it’s spring and your restaurant focuses on german products you have to feature asparagus and the next course, King crab & white asparagus with egg yolk and flavors of charcoal, did just this. The amount of effort that went into this course was truly impressive. First, the king crab was given a quick grill in the kitchen’s Green Egg to give it just a hint of smoke. Next, the charcoal from the grill was infused into egg yolks, sourced from the chefs friend who manages to supply all of the restaurant’s eggs with only 12 hens. Even more flavor was added by adding some dehydrated pike roe into the yolks as well as the juices of the crab. The end result was a smokey, rich broth that packed a ton of flavor but lacked balance as it overwhelmed the delicate sweet scrab. A very clever concept but to me could have used a bit of editing.
The meal got back on track with the first meat course, lamb with dashi and ramson. The lamb was sourced from a small German village on the border of Denmark called Husumer where, according to the server, the lambs have a view of the sea. I am not sure if the views make a difference but the lamb was top-notch, tasting like lamb but without being too gamey or overpowering. Müller smartly let the quality of the meat shine in this dish pairing it with a light dashi sauce (made with lamb instead of the traditional bonito) that made the lamb taste even better.
The second meat course was another stunner and described as mushroom flavors with chicken and seaweed. While this was nominally a chicken dish the chef chose to put mushroom first in the description for a reason, the flavor profile was pure umami. The free-range chicken was textbook, nice and moist with crispy skin. More importantly, it provided a blank canvas for the real star of the dish, the sauce. While the sauce tasted complex it was actually only two ingredients, water and dehydrated mushroom powder. The idea of the mushroom powder came out of necessity, the restaurant opting to make it to avoid food waste after a particularly bountiful mushroom season. I doubt all of the restaurant’s experiments work out but this one certainly did, adding a memorable bomb of umami flavors to the dish.
Pre-dessert was an interesting carrot granita with roses and carrot ice cream. While I did not care for the granita the ice cream was surprisingly good, having a perfect texture and the right level of sweetness to not just taste like a carrot.
The main dessert showed off rhubarb with goat’s milk and barrel-aged Mirin. Dessert at these types of restaurants can be hit or miss, quite a bit more variable than a restaurant churning out classic French pastries. This was a hit. The best part of the dish being some puffed rice, something I usually hate but adding a nice crunch and welcome toasted nuttiness. Even the mirin was a welcome if surprising addition. A good end by Marco Müller and team.