Rutz, Wine & Fine Food, Mitte

Rutz’s design is pure Barcelona. Maybe it’s the wooden slats that dress the outside of the building (makes me think of Cacao Sampaka) or the logo: a blood-red uneven circle, meant to emulate a wine ring. Or that upstairs there is a bustling 1 starred Michelin restaurant, with young friendly staff, in simple black shirts and trousers.Everyone is taken past the pass to their tables, which are bare, with only a heavy linen napkin on one side and a plain white candle, not in a glass but placed directly onto the table.

Laid back.

Relaxed.

We are given a table by the window.  Looking through the slats, past one of the grapevines that has been planted on the 1st floor balcony, Chausseestrasse looks positively charming.Which if you’ve ever walked down it, you know: it most definitely is not!

Like at Reinstoff (another Michelin starred restaurant which is just around the corner) we are given an amuse to start. A bowl of sprouting cress, jutting out of it are two wooden sticks with a cube of salmon topped of with a round orange ball and two miniscule testubes filled with a green liquid: a cold essence of curry. One of the waitresses comes over with the menu and begins to explain the concept. There’s a lot of talk about experiences and journeys and even my eyes start to glaze over as Hrabi reaches for his blackberry. We are told that we have to order the same dishes because there is ‘no way’ the kitchen can make us separate ones. That comment comes across as overly polemic until I realize that each dish is ‘interpreted’=served two ways. The menu concept proves a bit of a headache for the staff and the guests, who seem to all be foreign with a common language of English. They all have to sit through a 10 minute monologue. At some point the sommelier plops down on the chair next to the Japanese couple behind us when the concept proves to be too much for them.Really it’s simple. There is a theme, either an ingredient: olives or a feeling: ’15 minutes at the atlantic coast’. You pick one and then get two dishes using that idea or ingredient. You can go for a 3 themed menu which equates to 6 dishes and €105 or choose all 6 themes (the entire menu in fact) and get 12 dishes €180.We took the smallest one.  By the 4th main I opened the button on my trousers.  By the 2nd dessert, I pulled the zipper way down and carefully held my bag in front of me as a decoy as I walked out of the restaurant.  It was a lot of food.

Weird thing about the food; I liked it, individually but I didn’t feel like all the combinations Müller made were ideal.  Take the salmon with olives and cherries for example.  The salmon with its silvery crispy skin was textural deliciousness.  But the coupling of the olives and the cherries was muddy and muddled in my mouth, a little like wearing two shades of red, just not quite right.  The addition of the cocoa nibs, taken with the olives there was a hint of success but again the cherries just made that house of cards tumble-down.   Read more of this post