Ishicilelwe: 20.05.2024
Did we win the lottery? Unfortunately not. In fact, we saved up for a long time to treat ourselves to this luxury: a meal in the only vegan Michelin-starred restaurant in Germany. If you want to look it up, the restaurant is called Seven Swans and is based in Frankfurt am Main.
However, to get a table here you have to wait several months (which in turn means you can put the money aside bit by bit during this time).
Not far from the banks of the Main, the restaurant is housed in the narrowest building in town. In order to work as a restaurateur here, everything has to be spread out on different floors. There is a bar on the ground floor that offers a welcome drink. We thought it was a bit of a shame that we were left standing in front of the door in the rain and turned away because we arrived 10 minutes early. This is due to the narrowness of the building, but the somewhat rude rejection was an unfortunate start.
Once you get to the top, everything is very sophisticated. The different courses are always explained very well by the chef himself, which shows once again how special a meal here is. All ingredients are regional, which means that there can of course be no imported goods such as citrus fruits or coffee. Instead, the local fruit and vegetables are often fermented, for example to achieve a certain level of acidity. Vegetable or mushroom stocks, on the other hand, are often boiled down to add spice and an intense umami taste.
When serving, you will probably often use tweezers, as each of the snacks is assembled from various individual components to create a small work of art.
The wine accompaniment is also very carefully selected, but we found the non-alcoholic beverage selection even more interesting. The variety of vegetable juices and/or extracts that are "brewed" here is amazing.
For us, the evening ended very happily at around 11:30 p.m. and will be a lasting experience that will be talked about for years to come.