In portrait
Claus-Peter Lumpp: The culinary marathon runner among the three-star chefs
Claus-Peter Lumpp cooks at three-star level in the “Bareiss” in Baiersbronn.
© Hotel Bareiss
Claus-Peter Lumpp is more than a forest and meadow cook, although where he cooks it is mainly forest and meadows. In the “Bareiss” in the Black Forest, the three-star chef has been putting his signature on every dish for decades.
One street, lots of greenery, lots of nothing. Mitteltal is the Black Forest as one dreams of it: untouched and idyllic, something out of date. And culinary hotspot. There, in Baiersbronn, two of Germany’s best kitchens have their address. The hotels “Traube Tonbach” and “Bareiss”. In the latter, Claus-Peter Lumpp stirs the pot. The story of a chef who becomes a marathon runner every day for his three stars.
If Lumpp had his way, he would be tinkering with cars today and not with recipes. Sure, he’d rather learn to taste than read, helping out in the family restaurant early on. But he definitely didn’t want to become a chef, as his grandmother had once prophesied for him. In the end it was a combination of fortunate circumstances – starting with the vision of a careers advisor and a spa hotel that didn’t look for an apprentice but then took one – that ensured that Lumpp did not escape his fate. It’s been four decades now. Since then, the chef has reached for the stars and never let go.
Lumpp’s salutary decision for the “Bareiss”
The spa hotel of yore is now the Hotel “Bareiss”. And Claus-Peter Lumpp is still there. There was a time when he thought he had to shift his horizons. The rural exodus drove him to Düsseldorf, into the arms of star chef Günter Scherer. It was a short interlude. He had wanted to fall in love with city life, but city life didn’t want him. “The city made me sick,” says Lumpp. It wasn’t a year before his hair fell out and he developed a rash. The doctors spoke of the end of his career. But Lumpp knew what he was missing: the Black Forest. The chef returned home, back to the “Bareiss”. A salutary decision.
Lumpp is one of the old school. He says so himself. One who cooks classic French with body and soul. Whose dishes claim to be flawless and as elegant as they are opulent. As opulent as the restaurant, where three tablecloths lie on top of each other on the tables, the glasses are mouth-blown and the fabrics are made of golden brocade. Things that stand for a luxury that acts as a counterpoint to the minimalism trend. “The “Bareiss” doesn’t shy away from a grand entrance,” says Lumpp. And the restaurant can afford to drum loudly.
The third star was a long time coming
It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning in 2007. Lumpp remembers these details. Because on this day a dream came true that he had been working towards for 15 years: the third Michelin star. He had almost written it off. Claus-Peter Lumpp’s path to the stars is inextricably linked to the “Bareiss” and the family that owns it, he says. Soon after his return he had taken over the house’s one-star. He was later promoted to be the new head of the culinary flagship “Bareiss”.
This included a year of wandering, which brought him to the best kitchens in Europe, where he was fine-tuned by the likes of Alain Ducasse, Eckart Witzigmann and Heinz Winkler. Then in 1992, when he was 28, he took over the reins of the two-star restaurant. A year later he was allowed to call himself the youngest two-star chef in Germany. But the third star was a long time coming. He had given himself 15 years. For 15 years he wanted to fight for the third star, after that it should be over. He says: “Fortunately, fate would have it that I didn’t have to worry about what happened afterwards.”
Lumpp has arrived at the Kocholymp and is currently one of nine chefs who have been awarded three Michelin stars. He fights every day to keep it that way. From a three-star chef, he says, complete continuity is expected, excellent level without fluctuations. In return, he and his team deliver something like an Olympic performance every day – “a marathon that doesn’t end after 42.195 kilometers, but continues the next day”.
Isolde Heinz and Gunnar Meinhardt have more about Claus-Peter Lumpp and the other three-star chefs, how they tick and what drives them in the portrait collection: “Three stars: more is not possible” written down. The quotes are taken from the book.
Continue reading:
– Christian Jürgens: The three-star chef who was discovered washing dishes
– Marco Müller: This is Berlin’s only three-star chef
– Clemens Rambichler: An accident made him Germany’s youngest three-star chef
– Fehling, Elverfeld, Bau: Germany’s best chefs talk insider’s heads
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