A visit to Johann Lafer is almost inevitably a journey into well-being. It starts with the journey, the sunny autumn morning bathes the Rhenish-Hessian landscape between Bad Kreuznach and Bingen in an almost outrageously advantageous light, the hills, the gold-colored vines, half-timbered houses. Guldental is the home village of Lafer’s wife Silvia. The cooking school is opposite the church. And because the door is wide open, you just walk in. The host is just putting away a few baking trays, whereby the implicitness of the greeting almost assumes that you’ve known each other forever: “I’ll be right back, maybe coffee first?”
Johann Lafer, the great proximity machine of the German television kitchen. The “Styrian peasant boy” is known for making no distinction between Queen Silvia of Sweden, for whom he has already cooked, reporters who come for an interview, or the courier who delivers something; between the guests at the Chancellor’s summer party, which he was allowed to host more often, and the audience waiting for an autograph at his ZDF grill show.
Anyone who enters the immaculate white studio kitchen in Guldental can guess why there are newspaper portraits of the chef entitled “Am Laferfeuer”. The beef goulash that he cooked for his employees is still simmering in the oven. On the opposite table, which seats 18, there are sandwiches ready. “I’ll show you everything right away,” says Johann Lafer caringly as he serves the coffee, “I haven’t done one properly yet, hardly anyone knows. You have no idea!”
Lafer keeps in touch with antique dealers in several cities
Which is surprising insofar as they had arranged to meet specifically for a guided tour of his “collection”. But less than two hours later you will have to admit: Yes, it’s true, you had absolutely no idea!
To understand what “collection” means, head out and ten meters across the courtyard, right back in, into a small labyrinth of storage rooms that lie alongside, behind and above the studio kitchen. Immediately behind the first door, Johann Lafer lifts a box with silver cutlery and stainless steel vessels from the floor, fishes something out and holds it up with a beaming smile: “Sherbet bowls from the fifties, for just one scoop of ice cream, sensational right? From Jimmy from Magdeburg.” It turns out that Lafer is not only in contact with antique dealers in Magdeburg, but also in other cities, who call when they have something for him. And that he loves kitchen resolutions on locks. When he’s out and about, both professionally and privately, “then the others see where we’re going to eat, I also see where there’s good shopping.”
The cook is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the warehouse labyrinth, constantly pulling objects out of boxes or shelves to comment on them, with sentences like “I really have everything”, “You wouldn’t believe that” or “There is such a thing not at all anymore”: antique copper bowls in the shape of a fish, vinegar vats, Asian tea tins, the old milk jug from his parents’ court or a metre-long silver tray from the dining room of a royal family in Turin. Johann Lafer mainly collects crockery and kitchen utensils as well as things that have to do with his career and family.
The further you advance, the more orderly the collection appears. One room is a kind of closet with the shirts, waistcoats or jackets that the chef has worn on his many television appearances. In another store “all the cookbooks that have been published in Germany”. The compartment next door is reserved for the crockery of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory, including meter-high designer vases and sugar bowls with the Lafer logo – a custom-made product. In the warehouse behind it – stacked on shelves up to the ceiling – are neatly labeled crates with complete coffee service sets, from Mitropa to Rosenthal. And because there is always more to do, you finally get in the car to drive two villages further, where Lafer has rented a warehouse, maybe 1,500 square meters, “I don’t know exactly”, inside: pallets with batches of unsold cookbooks, beer mugs, kettles , a silver polishing machine, chairs from the hotel in Singapore where he used to be the head chef… As I said, you really had no idea.
A blue shirt? “What blue? I have 60 shades of blue!”
But why not just keep all this and keep buying more and more?
If he were just a private individual, he wouldn’t collect to the same extent, says Johann Lafer, later in the kitchen when he siphons off two bowls of goulash. Hoarding dishes of all types “just to change plates for four guests from time to time? That would be crazy,” he says. Since he gave up his restaurants, the cooking school has been the headquarters, films are shot here in the studio for his YouTube channel or photo spreads are shot, his collection is also ideal for props. He places individual pieces of crockery in pictures for cookbooks. And once a photographer asked for a blue shirt for a portrait. “What blue?” said Lafer, “I have 60 shades of blue.” He then has to laugh when he says it.
In addition, Johann Lafer is a tinkerer. Not only does his pilot’s license testify to his affinity for technology, he also holds 60 licenses and patents himself. He sells his own kitchen appliances, for example a whisk, for which he has developed special struts that are wider in some places to improve resistance. He loves handicrafts of almost every kind, he says, “the good fortune to see something being created”. Traditional things are often wonderfully perfect, if you can use some of them for the future, that makes him happy. He recently bought “mountains of staves” of 400-year-old sherry casks from a factory in Jerez, Spain, which nobody wanted. He had knife handles made from it.
But Lafer and the passion for collecting – that’s not just a story of utility, but also one of nostalgia. You have to say that the chef likes to drive to an antique dealer near Guldental when the stress gets too big. There, in the middle of the old things, “a completely different world”, he can relax wonderfully, says Johann Lafer. Life has gotten incredibly fast.
The shirring phase is over, now it’s a matter of selection
Although speed was actually never a problem for the chef, as can also be read in his biography in recipes that he has just presented (“A life for good taste”, Verlag Gräfe und Unzer): The departure from the Styrian court to big cities like Hamburg or Munich, the boom in gourmet cuisine, its own restaurants, the catering for state guests like George W. Bush, whose team frisked every chef and tasted everything, the many TV shows, YouTube, podcasts, books every year, his own magazine… He is always went with everything. What hurts him more is that the new tempo sometimes seems to lack the heart, the soul. The devaluation of the craft – one has to imagine, “there is only one company in Europe that processes hemp for linen tablecloths!” – all the clever kitchen appliances that nobody wants anymore, the hand-painted porcelain that nobody needs anymore. “If you look at the range of coffee machines in the electronics trade today, you can’t tell me that emotions are still connected to it.”
Johann Lafer has just turned 65. His team and his wife, who “isn’t happy with my collecting instincts,” are now putting gentle pressure on him to part with things. Gladly also by the container. He’s just entering the “selection phase,” he says, from the “gathering phase” that grips every true collector. Concentrating on what is worth preserving, making old things new for the modern age, capturing good things, creating small emotional islands, that’s what he wants.
When Johann Lafer has closed the roller door of his warehouse, he beams and shakes your hand, asks if you have everything and says it was a pleasure. Then he climbs into his sleek cream-colored VW Samba bus and trundles away. Of course, it’s the model that his – otherwise non-motorized – family rented 60 years ago for their first, modest vacations. Lafer bought the Bulli through the Wolfsburg VW Museum in California and had it refurbished. He said he already knew “that the happiness of driving it used to be much more intense, also because a car was so special back then”. Nevertheless, the Bulli is a perfect place today – precisely for this past.
No passion without accessories. Johann Lafer was particularly taken with these three collectibles:
Purple shoes
Purple shoes – custom made for a “Wetten, dass…?” gig.
(Photo: Marten Rolff)
“I got the shoes for an appearance on ‘Wetten, dass..?’ had it made, the first in violet! Some thought: He’s drunk! I’ve collected 500 pairs of shoes. I’ve also been ‘Mister Schuh Österreich’. A shoe manufacturer in my home town wanted me to do an apprenticeship with him, called a shoe modeller that, but my talent wasn’t enough. Later I went to many famous shoemakers to have my last made. Back then, welted models were still affordable.”
knife
Hand-forged, hand-carved: Lafer found the knife at the Dresden Christmas market.
(Photo: Marten Rolff)
“I collect crockery and cutlery, but I particularly like knives. I have one of the largest knife collections ever. When I touch a blade and know: someone hand-forged it in Solingen or Japan – that’s pure emotion for me. This one is from Dresden Christmas market. Damascus steel with a resinated corn handle. The protective case is hand-carved from rosewood, just like the box, which is padded with the inner lining of a BMW. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
lafer
Johann Lafer as a tin toy.
(Photo: Marten Rolff)
“That’s me as a wind-up figure. Actually, it should be able to turn a small scrap of tin. I had 10,000 of these made in India. A huge flop! Until recently I had stored the tin figures, but my employees wanted me to finally dispose of them. “
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