The Table
The Table review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin star
+High technical level of cooking with impressive transformation of ingredients.
+Interesting open kitchen concept gives guests an inside peek at how a three star kitchen can be run.
-Because of the open kitchen concept (and the near silence in which the kitchen team worked in) the ambiance felt a bit sterile.
-Flavors were a little safer than I expected.
Score: 94
Verdict: I left The Table with mixed feelings. Mostly I was in awe of the kitchen team. In awe of their consistency in technique, the precision they plated with, and how they transformed ingredients. Perhaps more than any restaurant in Germany, it was easy to see why The Table was a three-star restaurant. The amount of skill and effort that went into everything was just so evident as it unfolded in front of your eyes in the completely open kitchen.
That said, with all that skill, the meal did not quite hit the high notes I expected. Dishes seemed to follow a predictable formula. Start with a familiar flavor - think foie paired with something sweet. Then transform the ingredients - in the case of the Foie, the chef made it into ice cream. Next, the kitchen would add in an unexpected flavor without being too daring - for the foie dish a tarragon sauce. Rinse and repeat.
In the end, this was a very good meal but one that left me more impressed by what the kitchen could accomplish than moved by the taste of the food. Well worth the three stars but not the five-month wait to get a table.
Would I go again: No, too much effort
Price I Paid: €230
Value: 14/20
The Table & Chef Kevin Fehling background
Interior photo from OSRAM GmBH
When Chef Kevin Fehling decamped from La Belle Epoque in 2015 to open his own restaurant in Hamburg, gastronomic success seemed almost assured. Already a three-star chef, surely he would be able to replicate the same level of cooking when making a restaurant to match his own vision and food. As you probably already know, he did, earning three stars in The Table’s first year.
Less assured was a financial success. The amount of labor and ingredient cost that goes into three-star cooking must be astronomical. While this cost is partly passed on to the customer, there is a reason almost every other three-star in Germany is part of a hotel (and Rutz has a wine bar and more casual restaurant to help with profitability) - running a three-star restaurant is not exactly a high margin proposition and volume is low (The Table only serves around 100 guests per week).
Despite the challenge of going at it alone, Chef Fehling appears to have made a real success of it. The Table is the hardest reservation to get in Germany. I booked 5 months ahead just to get a mid-week seating (e-mail them, the online booking opens only three months ahead at which point they are already full). There is only one choice of menu (€230) and no choices to be made. That one menu is sent in advance so you can provide dietary restrictions. There is no bread, cheese board, or mignardise trolleys that introduce variability. The wine pairing is priced at what you would expect for a three Michelin star (€115) but with lower-cost wines - there wasn’t a bottle in the pairing over €20 other than 2005 Trittenhiemer Milz Auslese. Going into a week, the restaurant knows exactly how many covers they have and exactly what those covers will eat.
The same precision Fehling applies to the business side is on full display during service. Everything is prepped in advance so they can be fully vetted by the chef. Proteins are cooked sous vide so there is nothing left to chance. Service almost seems choreographed. The dinner was split between late and early seatings with each dish prepared for a seating at once. Ten odd plates appear and the kitchen team works in near silence to assemble the dishes under the watchful eye of Chef Fehling. Once finished, plates are brought to the guests one table at a time. While Chef Fehling added a tableside flourish to our neighbor’s plates, our dishes arrived next so he could move down the counter and repeat. Following the Chef, our server would give a more detailed description of the course. As we ate, the kitchen would switch to preparing the course for the late sitting which was one course behind us. This ballet was then repeated for each dish, the entire meal going off without a hitch.
The downside to the well-rehearsed service style was it made everything a tad robotic. There was not much time to engage with the chef as he was focused on moving to the next table and even the servers needed to keep to a tight schedule once the meal started going. There is nothing wrong with this per se but I didn’t get that “next level” genuine hospitality I’ve had from some of my favorite restaurants.
What I ate at The Table
A meal at The Table always starts with an impressive array of nibbles from the kitchen. The first three were, from left to right a crab sandwich, Mexican taco, and Indian summer bun.
Those three weren’t everything though as there was also an egg carbonara (left) and pulpo tartar with mojo (right). Without going into details of each bite, these were very well made and really primed you for the rest of the meal with their eclectic flavors that toured the world and refined presentations to boot. Perhaps there was not that one standout bite that I will remember for a long time (like the foie gras macaron at Cheval Blanc) but a solid group showing off great skill.
The first course was bluefin tuna with sea urchin cream, trout caviar, wasabi pearls, and brown butter. This was a good start, with the kitchen choosing to make use of both fatty toro and lean tuna saddle to create a dish that felt familiar and new at the same time. The use of both tuna cuts was quite practical, both in letting the guest compare their tastes side by side but also in preventing the dish from being too fatty which may have happened if only toro was used. The wasabi pearls were also a nice piece of work from the kitchen, adding a very subtle wasabi flavor without being too strong. On the negative side, the wakame on the top was cut quite long which made it somewhat impractical to eat gracefully and I thought the flavor of urchin cream got lost.
The next course was a foie gras terrine with smoked eel, pineapple, pink pepper and tarragon. Just like the tuna, this was another slick presentation with the foie gras cut in slim rectangles and alternated with identically shaped pineapple and eel. Add in vibrant green tarragon sauce and a quenelle of foie gras ice cream and you had an overall effect that reminded me a bit of a cubist painting. The taste of the dish was on point with the flavors being a logical combination and the tarragon sauce adding a welcome note to more traditional foie gras flavors. The terrine itself was very good quality but a tad below my favorite foie gras dishes in its depth of flavor.
The third course featured two plates that were meant to be eaten together - on one dish was AKI caviar with yuzu balls and a dashi jelly, on the other, a potato foam covered beef tartar. This was three-star comfort food with the flavor combination quite familiar. While the flavors were classic, the execution was another level with the potato foam in particular light as air. Despite the high level of execution, overall this dish was a tad boring - the only interesting part was the pairing of the yuzu (served in balls, a repeat of the technique used on the wasabi in the first course) with the caviar which worked very well.
While the first three dishes were solid, I thought the two main courses were noticeably better. The main dish was cod with spring maki, rice cream, and lemon ponzu dashi. The thing that stood out most for this dish was the ingredient quality and precision with how they were treated. Top-class cod cooked low and slow in a bath of soy sauce to keep it moist and flakey. A hollandaise with the correct amount of lemon zip (a rarity in even the best restaurants). Melon and vegetables jumped off the plate with their flavor. Eating this dish was a joy - each component individually earning your respect for how good it was while also going with everything else on the plate.
The main meat course was another triumph from the kitchen - challans duck with strawberry, rhubarb, and sherry vinegar hollandaise. What a piece of duck this was. Cooked sous vide, hit with some intense heat in the salamander to crisp up the skin, and then served with a jus made from its juices. It is hard to see how this could have been improved upon. The other components added some nice sweetness and acidity to balance it out. That said, I didn’t enjoy the small ball covered in what looks like cereal (I missed what it was in my notes). I assumed this was to add texture (maybe it wasn’t?) but the cereal/granola seemed a tad stale, the only technical misstep I could find in the meal. Lastly, you just need to respect that the kitchen went all out and sprung for the platinum version of the classic Bernardaud ecume plate (these will set you back well over $200 per plate).
The most striking part of the dessert, jelly of berries with red shiso, pistachio, was the color as the vibrant red provided stark juxtaposition to the white plate. Besides its vibrant appearance, the dessert also delivered on flavor with the jelly having a nice smooth texture and a strong berry flavor (think of this as the most optimal version of the mixed berry jelly you get from the grocery store). Rounding out the jelly was pistachio ice cream which was a logical pair for the berries. To complete the eating experience, Chef Fehling included an interesting small dish on the side which had a warm white chocolate sauce with berry sorbet as the sorbet slowly melted into the chocolate which changed the taste and provided an interesting temperature contrast.
The mignardises “Chocolate bars from all over the world” was quite the flex from the kitchen. Each dish featured unique flavor combinations but were most remarkable for their presentation - the strawberry facsimile being particularly convincing (actually filled with yogurt and chocolate). Fehling’s continued incorporation of interesting presentations made for a strong finish to the meal when most kitchens are playing it safe by sending out more classical bites.