Fritz & Felix is the restaurant of the grand hotel Brenners Park-Hotel und Spa in Baden-Baden. It opened in October 2018 in place of Brenners Park-Restaurant and replaced its predecessor’s tasting-menu kitchen with a concept built around an open charcoal grill.[1] Farid Fazel has been head chef since 2020.[2]
Concept and cuisine
The London agency The Gorgeous Group developed the restaurant concept, and the Swiss chef Nenad Mlinarevic took charge of the kitchen concept as culinary adviser. The first head chef, Sebastian Mattis, put it into practice.[3] There are no elaborate tasting menus. Instead, several small dishes are served in the middle of the table.[1]
A designer charcoal grill by the English firm Charcoa, built in La Coruña in northern Spain, forms the centre of the restaurant. It burns wood from the Black Forest, from fir and spruce to beech and birch. Meat, fish and vegetable dishes come off the embers, some directly over the open flame, some in cast-iron pots.[1] At the opening, head chef Mattis summed up what the kitchen was after:[1]
We don’t want to create cerebral works of art. The products should taste of what they are - whether they come from the region or from other countries. We also want to season boldly. Our food should have character, soul and a story.
Translated from the German original.
Konstantin Baum, Germany’s youngest Master of Wine, chose the wines when the restaurant opened. Rather than a wine list in the conventional sense, he compiled a 28-page “shortlist” in magazine format every quarter, with portraits of the growers and descriptions of the wines.[4] Today the house advertises a “Catch & Roast of the Day” from the grill that changes daily, along with vegetarian and vegan dishes.[5]
Rooms and design
Fritz & Felix divides into three areas: the bar, a section with an open show kitchen and the restaurant itself. A terrace looks out over the hotel park.[3]
The London designer Robert Angell, who also created the Blue Bar at The Berkeley in London, designed the interior. He combined the warm colours of the Black Forest with cool design elements. For the acoustics of the room the hotel flew in a sound expert from Singapore, who worked on it for ten days.[4] A second motif runs through the furnishings: the hotel’s connection to historic cars and to the Concours d’Élégance, taken up for instance in ribbed glass modelled on car headlights.[6]
Visiting
Fritz & Felix opens in the evening only and closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The bar stays open later than the kitchen. The hotel takes reservations by telephone and email.[5]
History
Until 2017 Brenners Park-Restaurant stood on this spot, holding two Michelin stars as the city’s most highly decorated restaurant. It closed on 30 September 2017 after head chef Paul Stradner left.[7] The hotel first held talks with one of Germany’s ten three-star chefs, but then decided against continuing with gourmet cuisine.[4] Managing director Frank Marrenbach explained the break at the opening of the successor:
We sensed that we needed a clean break.
Translated from the German original.
Fritz & Felix opened in October 2018.[1] In September 2020 a new trio took over: Farid Fazel as head chef, Matthias Pfundstein as restaurant manager and Benjamin Schreiber as head barkeeper. Fazel and Schreiber came from the Baden-Baden restaurant Medici, where Fazel had cooked for Ban Ki-moon and Barack Obama, among others. In 2018 he published the cookbook #Heimat-Schwarzwald reloaded.[2]
The name
Two invented characters from the Black Forest give the restaurant its name: Fritz, a red fox, and Felix, a hare. In the concept of the house the fox stands for the mysterious and the mystical, the hare for liveliness and curiosity. Together, as an illustrated fable, the two tell the story of the restaurant.[3]
References
- ↑1.1↑1.2↑1.3↑1.4↑1.5 Fritz & Felix in Baden-Baden ist eröffnet, Tageskarte, 18 October 2018, accessed 30 July 2026
- ↑2.1↑2.2 Neues Team im Restaurant Fritz & Felix, Tageskarte, 15 September 2020, accessed 30 July 2026 (Archived)
- ↑3.1↑3.2↑3.3 Brenners Park-Hotel Baden-Baden: Neues Restaurant Fritz & Felix, Gourmetwelten, 21 June 2018, accessed 30 July 2026
- ↑4.1↑4.2↑4.3 “Fritz & Felix”: neues Kulinarik-Konzept in Brenners Park-Hotel, The Frequent Traveller, accessed 30 July 2026
- ↑5.1↑5.2 Fritz & Felix Restaurant, Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa, accessed 30 July 2026 (Archived)
- ↑ Fritz & Felix, Robert Angell Design International, accessed 30 July 2026
- ↑ Brenners Park-Restaurant schließt bis März 2018, Allgemeine Hotel- und Gastronomie-Zeitung, accessed 30 July 2026 (Archived)