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OUR CHEFS 2017


Thomas Buhner
Germany
Master of Aromatic Cuisine

Thomas Bühner has been one of Germany’s top chefs for more than twenty years. Since 2012, Thomas Buhner was awarded with 3 Michelin Star and his now one of only ten German chefs who has three stars.

Born in Riesenbeckin 1962 to a housewife and a commercial clerk, his first experiences of the restaurant trade came in his grandparents’ pub where there was always aslice of freshly baked mixed-grain bread spread with butter and topped with Westphalianham waiting for him as he came through the door and where he would fall asleep in the evening to the chatter of customers and the sound of people clattering around in the kitchen. 

He trained as a chef at the SchweizerHaus in Paderborn, and this was followed by stints at the Düsseldorf Hilton under Günter Scherrer, the Landhaus Scherrer in Hamburg, the Grand Cru Restaurant in Lippstadt and the RestaurantJörg Müller in Westerland on the island of Sylt. Then, in 1989, Bühner moved to Baiersbronn to take up a post as Chef de Partie at HaraldWohlfahrt’s Schwarzwaldstube. 

He sees this as a key moment in his career, since in addition to the discipline and consistency that are essential for any successful chef, Bühner was particularly intrigued by the down-to-earth attitude and humaneness that Wohlfahrt showed towards the people who worked for him on a daily basis. He couldn’t have been better prepared to take up the position of Chef at the La Table Restaurant in Dortmund in 1991 where he gained his first Michelin star five years later, followed by a second one in 1998. 

In 2001, Bühner scooped the Gault Millau “Rising Star of the Year” award and was voted “Chef of the Year” just five years later. Together with Thayarni Kanagaratnam he has been running Restaurant La Vie in Osnabrück since April 2006. In 2009, Thomas Bühner received the accolade of becoming a Relais& Chateaux “Grand Chef”, while the la vie was granted membership of “Les Grandes Tables du Monde” at the beginning of 2010.

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