Tim Malzer
He rails against Berlin’s hipster chefs
In an interview, Tim Mälzer hardly leaves a good hair on a certain colleague guild.
© imago/Stephan Wallocha
Tim Mälzer is one of the most famous TV chefs and known for his open words. Now he’s ranting about hipster chefs in Berlin.
Hamburg chef Tim Mälzer (51) is famous for his clear words, notorious and feared by colleagues. In an interview in the April issue of the men’s magazine “Playboy”, he once again didn’t mince his words. Above all, Berlin’s hipster chefs get their fat from it. When asked when a dish would be too philosophical for him personally, Mälzer relents: “I see things, understand what the chef wants to say, but I can’t taste it anymore.” He cites “brutal regionalism” as an example: “It’s celebrated in particular by Berliners wearing black turtleneck sweaters and thus carries a kind of bohemian arrogance.”
From these colleagues, the last potato would be processed from “nose to tail” and flavors celebrated that maltsters would describe as “freshly mown meadow”. “How silly do we want to be?” asks Mälzer. For him it is too intellectual if such emotions are poured over it: “Then I find it embarrassing.” Eating should first and foremost be a pleasure, fill you up and provide you with nutrients.
Tim Mälzer: Better grandma’s butter cake than a complicated dessert
For him, good food is when “good basic products are prepared at the right moment with the right attitude”. That would start with a sandwich: “Greased, cut, seasoned and decorated with a radish by someone else, it tastes much better than what we might prepare ourselves.” In general, for him, “a chicken fricassee or a butter cake from grandmother’s is sometimes much better than a dessert that consists of 37 components”.