Ophelia

Rating: 18
Author: Gault&Millau

Seestraße 25, 78464 Constance, Germany

18/20
Prestige Restaurant

BOOK

1 PHOTOS

Chef: Dirk Hoberg
Cooking: French | Gastronomic | International | Vegetarian
Services: Access for people with disabilities | Accommodation | Electric charging station | Private Parking | Terrace
Style: Bar | Elegant | Exceptional setting | Romantic | With friends

Gault&Millau's review 2025

The noble Art Nouveau villa in which the Ophelia resides offers two very different experiences with the same menu sequence: classic fine dining in a dignified ambience with a view of the lake and a hip front cooking atmosphere for four guests at a narrow bar table directly on the pass. There, Dirk Hoberg and his team act quietly and concentrated - and create quite complex plates of refined French haute cuisine with international and very own accents. This succeeds throughout the entire menu formidably and with remarkably intensely contrasting aromas, as the amuses (miniature taco with char and its caviar, truffled beef tartare and an avocado tartlet with crab) prove as simply as impressively. Classic is the foie gras on the finest fruit bread base under truffle jelly with goose liver ice cream, pecan slices and purslane. The French red mullet as a tartare with celery and tarragon, accompanied by a dumpling of fermented tomato, as well as à part pickled and fried artichoke with wood sorrel and a generous portion of caviar, is excellent. The butter-tender saddle of venison with red cabbage, celery and separate ragout is perfect. Everything comme il faut, at the highest level of craftsmanship and sensory, and also served professionally and competently. Hoberg sets his own accents with delicacies such as the sweet roasted aromas of buckwheat and macadamia nuts with baked sweetbreads with plenty of truffles and black salsify truffle velouté or his pearl barley risotto with misoge-pickled and lightly smoked cod. The fact that the ingredients that are excellent across the board do not always come from the region – as the wafer-thin Lake Constance eel on a spelt dumpling with pear in a palatable broth exemplifies – although there are also comparably good sources there, is pretty much the only criticism Hoberg has to put up with. Serving Swedish zander directly on the shores of Lake Constance is difficult to justify, and bison of the best quality graze not only in Canada, but also in Baden. Otherwise, however, you can respectfully praise and enjoy it throughout, because the exotically calibrated patisserie also keeps what the ambience and the menu prices promise.