This chicken is a creature of nature, not a mass product of the heavy-duty agricultural industry. It is called Kikok and comes from a producer group in East Westphalia, had a longer life and more exercise than its industrial brothers, saw the daylight and breathed fresh air, was fed corn and not treated with antibiotics, was able to train muscles while romping on hay bales and thanks us for his good life with an intense, authentic, powerful taste, which our chef pays tribute to in the form of a Suprematist painting: the roasted breast is covered with a purple spice crust, the braised leg is hidden as a ragout in an eleven-tender sphere, while yellow carrots and beetroot,Cooked egg yolks and foamed nut butter jus complete the dish to create a picture of a plate full of colorful geometric shapes. And we think about replacing the word gourmet cuisine with the term gourmet cuisine in the future, because in very good restaurants like this we are guaranteed to find that taste that we so often lose in our everyday discounter canteen system catering.
Jakob Strobel y Serra
Deputy head of the features section.
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Tobias Schmitt has been a taste fanatic since childhood because he was allowed to grow up under similarly happy circumstances as the Kikok chickens.
His father once cooked three Michelin stars with Eckart Witzigmann for the Munich “Aubergine”, stood every Sunday with his son for the ritual family meal in the home kitchen and made sure that Filius wanted to become a cook.
Schmitt did his apprenticeship at Brenners Parkhotel in Baden-Baden, where he cooked shoulder to shoulder with Andreas Krolik, then went to Cornelia Poletto and Thomas Martin in Hamburg, made a few stops in Australia, New Zealand and Amsterdam before becoming sous chef and Head pastry chef in Frankfurt's two-star hotel “Lafleur” returned to home - under the command of head chef Krolik, who was to become his most important teacher.
Right in the middle of the flavor shark tank
After almost six years, the time was ripe for his own head chef, which he found in the Hotel Favorite in Mainz, albeit with a virus-related delay. He started in March 2020, was overtaken by lockdown a few days later, then sorted himself on the stove for almost six months, promptly cooked himself a Michelin star, but was then banned from working for seven months and can only start at full speed now .
Tobias Schmitt is seething, you can tell from the greetings from the kitchen. The baked fish praline with aioli, the shot made from fennel and celery, the flamed salmon with a sesame crust, parsley puree, wasabi mousse and celery rolls do not strike a soft note, but hit the aroma drum and hit the fanfare horn, as loud as if all of Mainz should be from the actions of the young chef in the "Favorite" are announced.