In the fourth duel of the new season “Kitchen Impossible”, Tim Mälzer has to assert himself against a younger version of himself: Viktoria Fuchs. He goes into battle with big guns against the “Miss” – but the woman from the Black Forest fights like a lioness.
Everyone is their own worst enemy. The poet Leopold Schefer once knew that. Perhaps this explains why Tim Mälzer played along with his opponent in the fourth duel of the new season “Kitchen Impossible”, Viktoria Fuchs, “bestially” – “and with thieving joy”. After all, the young woman from the Black Forest is something like “a Tim Mälzer of modern times, a diamond in the rough”. Fuchs is young, talented, successful. But above all, she is in no way inferior to the Hamburg chef when it comes to boasting. When he looks at her, it’s a bit like looking in the mirror. Mälzer called for a “culinary snowball fight with boulders” – and didn’t promise too much.
The highlights of the duel between Mälzer and Fuchs
The concept is the same: Tim Mälzer duels with a chef. Two tasks have to be completed at two locations each with four original chefs (whose dishes the opponents have to recreate). The top chefs do not have the recipe for this – they only have to discover the secret of the dishes by tasting and smelling them. A jury evaluates the result and awards points. The winner of the duel is the one with the most points.
This chef had to prove herself:
Viktoria Fuchs is one of three cooks who are challenging Tim Mälzer in the current season. The “young lady from the Black Forest”, as she called herself, comes from a family of restaurateurs and is now the sixth generation to run the “Spielweg” restaurant in the Münstertal. The 31-year-old made a name for herself with a style of cooking that combines local game cuisine with ingredients from the Far East. In 2021, she received a green star from the Michelin Guide for particularly sustainable gastronomic orientation.
These dishes had to be cooked:
- Tim Mälzer has to go to the stove at Mélanie Serre’s “Le Louis Vin” in Paris: thyme lamb fillet with lemon confit and thyme, artichoke puree and barigoule
- Viktoria Fuchs cooks a dish by Li Xiaodong in Hamburg’s Dim Sum House: Wu-Gok Taro with Szechuan Dip
- Tim Mälzer is allowed to cook with Robert Burgmeier in the kitchen of the British ambassador in Berlin: cheese and leek soufflé
- Viktoria Fuchs has to prove herself to Juan Amador in Vienna: Iced Beurre Blanc with caviar
Viktoria Fuchs – she dares
Tim Mälzer recently said in his podcast “Fiete Gastro” that the whole format “Kitchen Impossible” consists of the chefs “riding themselves in the shit”. The tasks are chosen accordingly. That doesn’t mean, however, that one challenger after the next should simply rub new salt into old wounds, i.e. always have to present the same cooking styles to the Hamburger that it is known that he neither likes nor is particularly good at. Because this is a game of safety, but one that not only tires maltsters in the long run. Nevertheless, this has been the case recently. So it was all the more refreshing that the 31-year-old Fuchs dared to do something and didn’t put her faith in a supposedly safe card.
In Paris, Mälzer has to compete with Mélanie Serre and was visibly impressed by the young Frenchwoman. After all, she earned her spurs from one of the absolute best chefs in the world, Joel Robuchon. He was a good, but not a high-end chef, one heard Mälzer say to her – modestly as seldom. In fact, he earned a lot of praise from the chef, although he sometimes behaved “like a little pig” (Serre) in the kitchen and showed technical deficiencies. His sauce, which ended up being very different from the original, but according to Serre it was also better than the original. “I’ll ask Tim for the recipe,” she said. A compliment like an accolade. It was a very nice task, summarized Mälzer. Viktoria Fuchs didn’t try to show him something that she knew he couldn’t do – “the stupid thing for Viki, I didn’t fail”.
maltster as senior teacher
For Mälzer, Viktoria Fuchs must be a bit of an omen from the future, the announcement of a changing of the guard. After all, he said himself that she was a younger version of himself – only “without Pillermann”. But before the next generation takes over the scepter completely, the old squad (Fuchs: “Timmy is pretty old, too”) once again gets the upper hand.
Fuchs’ cooking style is characterized by a fusion of traditional game dishes with Asian components. For example, Cornelia Poletto revealed on “Fiete Gastro” that Mälzer cooks the Black Forest woman’s wild boar gyoza and has a different name on the restaurant menu. More appreciation is hardly possible. Still, he didn’t let the teasing go away. Her cooking task in the dim sum house was deliberately intended as a lesson in authentic Chinese cuisine.
“Here and today you will experience the sinking of the Viktoria Fuchs,” announced the cook. She then set about implementing the dish with so much professionalism, ambition and perseverance that even the original chef has to express his appreciation – even if she was unable to decipher the secret. “I said that there is no format in which chefs can fail more beautifully,” she said afterwards. “I failed beautifully today.” An assessment that Mälzer did not share: “I can tell you, nobody who was sitting there (Note d. Red.: Kevin Fehling was on the jury after all) and nobody sitting here at Kitchen Impossible would have scored more points than you.”
The meanest way to show affection
Viktoria Fuchs had expected in advance that “the bacillus Tim, with something nasty around the corner” would come. And he did. Or as he put it: “You’re a little sparrow and you get big guns”. Because after the low blow in Hamburg, Fuchs had to pinch the next wrestler from “Kitchen Impossible” heavyweight Mälzer. He actually sent her to three-star chef Juan Amador. When the cook realized who would be looking over her shoulder while she was cooking, namely one of her idols, she first had to sit down on the side of the road and collect herself. “What a blatant honor to be sent to Juan Amador,” she said. And that’s exactly what it was.
Because the tasks that Mälzer had chosen for Fuchs were like little love letters with thorns – nasty, but at the same time full of benevolence. Both had such an extreme fall height that Fuchs could only win. If not by points, then by the will to fight that she showed. “I give her the opportunity to embark on a hero’s journey, it’s her decision whether she buys the right ticket,” explained Mälzer mischievously. Fuchs babbled through the nervousness, almost destroyed an ice machine, cursed like a sparrow – but delivered brilliantly. “Well done,” said Grandmaster Amador appreciatively. There are far too few women in the kitchen, “it’s nice that a boy like that is going her way!” The point cards also showed that Fuchs had passed the hero’s journey with flying colors.
Fox shortly before disqualification
As much as Mälzer had to grumble about the tasks he was given in the last few episodes, he embraced Fuchs’s euphorically. Even if the cook initially sent him onto the slippery slope in round two. Mälzer knew that he would cook on British soil, but when his plane landed in Berlin, he briefly became Rumpelstiltskin and demanded that the Black Forest woman be disqualified. But Fuchs surprised with an ace up his sleeve: Mälzer was allowed to cook in the ambassador’s house. You could see how flattered he was.
But the difference between youthful esprit (Fuchs) and routine in the low-pulse area (Mälzer) was also noticeable there. While the cook fought like a lioness, initially turning around hopeless situations by simply asking passersby for help in the supermarket until she found the help she needed or encouraged the kitchen staff to swap products, Mälzer kept putting himself through his “old sloppiness” even a leg. Sometimes he went about his work so lazily that he made mistakes that he shouldn’t have made. Still, it was enough to win.
After Fuchs from Hamburg had to digest a really lousy point average of 4.1, she turned things up under the watchful eye of Juan Amador and pushed Mälzer back on the lazy – uh, experienced – fur in the last meters. Still, “Mister Kitchen Impossible” saved the win with a solid performance of 12.9 to 11.2 points across the finish line.
In the next issue of “Kitchen Impossible” Tim Mälzer meets the Frenchman Alain Weissgerber. The duel can be seen on March 6th from 8:15 p.m. on VOX or im Stream on RTL+.