Hos Fischer

White Guide — Very fine level

After the restaurant industry's darkest winter in recent times, we are finally back. Despite diligent and fantastic takeaway attempts that tried to curb the senselessness and looming economic downturn, it has become crystal clear what cannot be outsourced or satisfied online. Presence and hospitality are the keys to a good restaurant experience, and that is exactly what David Oliver Fischer and his staff can—and have missed—doing during the lockdown’s dead water. This is evident on the second evening of this reopening, as Fischer and his team move among the packed tables with guests practically bubbling with joy—giddy as cows on the first spring grass. Symbolically, this first week features a family‑style dinner with many small dishes and a couple of unrivaled pasta dishes that only Fischer can make. We have tried several of the dishes as takeaway, but they did not taste nearly as good, because a meal is an aesthetic experience where presence and hospitality are the supreme ingredients. The meeting between chef and guest is a relationship that is entirely different from the interaction between food producer and customer, which we were reduced to during the lockdown. Now the warm rolls taste like a little greeting from the kitchen, not just bread that needs five minutes in the oven. Perfectly crusted and mild in flavor, they can serve as subtle carriers for the well‑spiced baba ganoush or absorb the good date‑tahini dressing with chili and mint for the white asparagus. The antipasti servings—a happy marriage of Italian and Middle‑Eastern cuisine—are also the nerve of Fischer’s own gastronomic heritage, and with cleverness and gentleness they challenge each other. The crisp broccolini comes with a garlic‑almond dressing and a sprinkle of toasted, crunchy buckwheat kernels, and the hot, crunchy arancini are paired with a spicy mayo. This style of meal calls for many more green dishes than Fischer is usually known for, so we also get gratinated fennel and buffalo mozzarella on a perfectly rounded ramson pesto—a rarely fine, non‑bitter variant where freshness, herbaceousness, and just a hint of garlic’s kokumi shine through. An entrée that requires time and invites conversation at the table with the hosts. Hunger is well satisfied with abundant, fresh, seasonal greens, and the good family meal is rounded off with two of Fischer’s best pasta dishes: linguine with chicken, chili and mint, and a special version of cacio e pepe, where the pasta’s shape—tiny, delicate orecchiette—creates an impression of lightness, perhaps also due to a sauce variant with less pepper and a mushroom‑truffle base. With good pinot noir in the glass, restaurant life resumes with the greatest loving embrace from host to guest. We are at the top of a very good class, because here it is spacious and unpretentious—it is the family visit in the gastronomic world.

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