Matthew Diether
Star chef successful in Estonia after fleeing Berlin
The German star chef Matthias Diether in his restaurant “180° by Matthias Diether” in Tallinn. photo
© Arina Solntzeff/dpa
He used to cook in a well-known Berlin restaurant, and now Matthias Diether has had a premiere in Estonia. The move to Tallinn was a kind of escape: “I was a bit burned out,” he says.
For a long time, Estonia was an almost white spot on the world map of top gastronomy. But now restaurant experts from the French gourmet bible Michelin have honored top chefs in the Baltic EU country for the first time, and immediately honored two restaurants in the capital Tallinn with one of their stars. One of them went to the restaurant “180° by Matthias Diether”, named after its German chef.
Born in Berlin and raised in Swabia, the chef serves ambitious and seasonally inspired European gourmet cuisine. “The star is something very special and I’m happy to be the first in Estonia and the Baltic States to receive one. That’s of course something for the history books and makes me proud,” said Diether of the German Press Agency.
He opened his restaurant in 2018 in a hip, newly renovated harbor district of Tallinn. “I only use authentic, fresh products of the highest quality,” emphasizes the German, who charges around 160 euros for a six-course meal. “For me, the product is the true star of the plate.”
Diether was already the first star chef to work in Estonia. The 47-year-old ventured into the small country in north-eastern Europe in 2016 to work as chef de cuisine at a gourmet restaurant in an old manor house on a small Baltic Sea island.
“Eight years in Berlin sucked a lot”
It was a kind of escape: “I was a bit burned out. Eight years in Berlin sucked a lot,” he admitted. In the German capital, the “Berlin Master Chef 2013” was at the stove in the now-closed First Floor restaurant, after having previously trained with well-known master chefs in Germany and abroad.
Diether quickly fell in love with the natural landscape, his current Estonian wife and found culinary inspiration in the regional cuisine. “It was absolutely the right decision to move here. I feel very comfortable and at home in Estonia,” enthuses the top chef, who has retained his Swabian accent. The Michelin star brought him even closer to the country of 1.2 million inhabitants, whose food and dishes are strongly influenced by Scandinavian, Russian and German cuisine.