Gastronomy in sports clubs always face a dilemma.
The club members want large portions at low prices, appreciate a sociable atmosphere without any etiquette and are often satisfied with a few glasses of beer, which they prefer to have the landlord write to them.
The landlord, on the other hand, can seldom make a living from the club, but has to offer his external guests more than schnitzel with fried potato mountains and is not always happy when the athletes celebrate their victories too exuberantly.
Jakob Strobel y Serra
Deputy head of the features section.
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In the very fine Lärchenhof Golf Club in Pulheim near Cologne, which had its course designed by the golf legend Jack Nicklaus, a Solomonic way out of this gastronomic mess has been chosen: the guest room with its huge window fronts to greens and bunkers has been subtly divided into a bistro for hungry golfers and a gourmet restaurant for discerning gourmets, whereby both clients lead a largely autonomous existence - and therefore do not slide into the new dilemma of having to ask oneself which of the two culinary worlds is the better.
The fetishist for the best basic products
Of course we are in the delicatessen department and therefore very likely in the most ambitious sports restaurant in Germany, which the aperitifs leave no doubt about. While our colleagues over there are enjoying their veal chops and currywurst, we get a dark praline with duck liver filling, a potato cannelloni with lobster tartare and bouillabaisse cream, puffed duck skin with avocado, pineapple and chilli, a tartlet of plucked pork tailed lobster with black garlic and a marinated pork tailed lobster with tomato dashi, chive oil and bonito coffee vinegar - finely chiseled miniatures that, despite their playfulness, are always committed to a Far Eastern flavor purism.
In contrast, the subsequent smoked eel from Upper Bavarian breeding is entirely in the occidental tradition. It is cut into thin slices and arranged together with foie gras, hazelnut, onion verjus and miniature pearl onions to form a plate work of art in the style of René Lalique, the heaviness of the eel being just as artfully offset by the sharpness and above all the acidity of its companions. And by the way, after this prelude, the chef's entire culinary biography is open on the table.
Torben Schuster comes from Dormagen, fifteen kilometers away, but is anything but a local patriotic country man whose life radius is limited to a full tractor tank.
After struggling to study mechanical engineering for four semesters, he decided to do what he still loves to do today: to cook, and only at star level.
He completed his apprenticeship with Holger Berens in Düsseldorf and a stage with René Redzepi in Copenhagen, and then spent two and a half formative years with Jonnie Boer in Zwolle, the superstar among Dutch chefs and probably the greatest acid virtuoso of all chefs worldwide.