Rutz Restaurant

Rating: 19
Author: Gault&Millau

Chausseestraße 8, 10115 Berlin, Germany

19/20
Exceptional Restaurant

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Chef: Marco Müller
Cooking: Gastronomic | German | Local | Vegetarian
Services: Access for people with disabilities | Terrace
Style: Elegant | Wine Bar | With family | With friends

Gault&Millau's review 2025

The Rutz is one of Berlin's leading restaurants. In order not to scare off too much (also with the associated price level), the team around Executive Chef Marco Müller, who is celebrating his 20th anniversary at the Rutz this year, has introduced the reduced "Berlin Size Menu" - strictly limited, with six instead of ten courses and for 300 euros including drinks accompaniment. Whether this can pass as a special offer is up to everyone to decide for themselves. Regular paying guests have the choice between the 8-course "Nature and Flavor Inspiration Menu" or the green sister "Edgy Veggie", which has been newly added to the program, plus the still famous wine accompaniment (regular sommelier Nancy Großmann unfortunately left the Rutz in autumn 2024), but should possibly not be able to do so with the very ambitiously recommended add-ons, such as a small cam of caviar or a slice of pickled (!) Winter truffles remain resistant. It's not easy for Müller and team: the competition learns quickly. And so the detailed explanations or garums, umami, fermentation, regional producers and self-collected items along the way, which Maître Falco Mühlichen sympathetically presents for each course, no longer seem quite as unique as they did a year or two ago. Enough criticism at a high price and performance level: Chef Dennis Quetsch still cooks in a highly refreshing way. No heavy jus interferes with the concentration on the best ingredients, which are often accompanied by fermented, powdered and crunchy dishes. Quetsch usually achieves the necessary juiciness from the main product itself - and that is truly a high art, coupled with a subtle power of deduction, which leads to umami-heavy, but never boring, finely constructed and sophisticated plates. In addition, there are ingredients that are usually simple in the best sense of the word, but are refined into aroma explosions at Quetsch and Müller: onions, beets, potatoes, beetroot. Or, as in one of the three amuses, a finger food herring with delicious dill emulsion as fried fish in beer batter on dill emulsion. Simply good. It gets more complex with the first course, a piece of the finest trout, raw lacquered with a garum of head and carcass, plus whey with charcoal-flavored roe. Above it lie twelve wafer-thin kohlrabi squares, which in turn are topped by twelve larch needles, topped with a sourdough trout skin crumble, poured with larch oil and pressed wood sorrel. A feast for all the senses – and a prime example of "nose to tail fin" in perfection in the smallest of spaces and exponential play of aromas. Fantastic! Equally terrific is "Pure Our Handwriting" – here in the variant of a scallop with grated roe under fresh kale with physalis and popped buckwheat, completely covered by three kale chips with powdered beard of the scallop, plus a dill and mussel broth. Not an Instagram dish, but a diverse layer-by-layer experience for connoisseurs. And so it goes on – with bitter salads and yellow beetroot baked in salt, served with chicory on cod cream with nasturtium oil, topped with a granité crumble of beetroot and red chicory: hot and cold, bitter and sweet, crunchy and soft. Accompanied by a 2017 Saar Riesling Spätlese from Cantzheim: A stunner! Whether it's a coalfish with razor clams and scented nettle, a quail matured in goose fat for seven days, cooked in the oven, fried and flamed in lovage and quail tea (no, not sauce!) or a lamb-oyster combination: At Rutz, worlds of taste open up that reverberate. The patisserie goes the most independent ways and is the main reason why we are sticking with 5 toques this year: Courageously the spicy salad sticks with green fermented strawberry under frozen lettuce-dill crumble with sweet cornflowers as a predessert, the yarrow ice cream with wood sorrel with rhubarb and roasted barley with koji is impressive. All in all: a great culinary achievement! It goes without saying that the wine list in the former "Rutz Weinbar" can keep up with the specially composed "Rutz Rebellen".