Seehotel Überfahrt

 

 

Over water and by land we just simply make our way over to the beautifully large but intimate Althoff Hotel. The hotel with the values checklist that is strictly kept to. Each and every member of the staff is qualified and these values are now a part of them. We are happy to be at your service. No need to lament the loss of values here. Every day they prove anew that they are indeed happy to be there for the guests.

 

The hotel’s private beach along Lake Tegern is luring and gives us the chance to relax and arrive, to let the senses run free. This lake is like a raw diamond, merely roughly cut by the spectral-meteorological tool of the seasons. The peace and quiet in the three acre garden completes the feeling. All rooms and suites have a view of the lake or the mountains. In the age of air conditioning the sign ‘This window can be opened’ lets us exhale deeply. It does not worry nature one iota if we cannot breathe in fresh air, but we have a feeling that something is missing. Especially when we are on holiday from our hectic selves.

 

Illuminated by five stars the Überfahrt demands only that we accept all the pleasant moments awaiting us. The spa area with indoor and outdoor pools, generously proportioned sauna ‘scape’, exhilarating fitness glamour, and/or enjoyable beauty spa and fun days. Here families, singles, convalescent patients or stressed business high-flyers after a local conference will all find a quite unique location.

 

Four individual theme restaurants spoil you according to taste, but the gourmet restaurant under the exquisite artiste de cuisine Jürgens must be visited at least once. With the splendid commitment of his “ferrymen of delight” in the kitchen. In a business this size even such a master would be totally lost without such a team.

A Jürgens medal for the furnishing of the dining room. Noble and daringly free of table clothes to underline the elegant effect. He has made himself a very fine stage and the ritual of all the actors on it are synchronised and striking. No bell is rung yet the tension rises with every course. Restaurant manager, Johannes Gahberger, sommelier Frank Glüer and top-class personnel advise without any schoolmasterly raised fingers. The 2007 Scharzhofberger Riesling Kabinett slips down my throat, an off-dry delight from Reichsgraf von Kesselstadt.

 

 

 

 

Jürgens and his patron did well to enter into an alliance in the Überfahrt. When one has the treat after a meal to chat with the master at the table then one is highly astonished to hear that he did not have, as is often the case, the ‘genetic’ dream of becoming a chef. It was quite by accident, the Westphalian butcher’s boy says. He would also have liked to have become a pilot. Which, in a way, he has. From hanger to hanger he has climbed high into the skies: apprenticeship in Bad Homburg, down to Bavaria to Feinkost Käfer and Tantris in Munich, to the Residenz Aschau and Heinz Winkler. A quick turn northwards to Jörg Müller on Sylt, peeling off south again to Munich to Aubergine and, as from 1997, acting chef de cuisine in Restaurant am Marstall, gliding on to the last stop but one at Restaurant Kastell in Hotel Burg Wernberg in Köblitz before the final happy landing in the Überfahrt, voted Restaurant of the Year 2010 by FAZ³.

 

Teachers and idols are a necessary prerequisite to establishing one’s own special direction. Jürgens has achieved this: “Quality is never ever an accident. It is always the result of high aims, honest hard work, intelligent approach and clever execution.”(Willi A. Foster).

 

Climbed past all important summit awards to the two crowning Michelin stars. He will never give up on the demands he makes of himself. But he must keep a clear conscience in relation to himself and his family. This he has managed with his guests. Thanks to his lucullean courses I discover what it means when one talks about the way to a person’s heart is through the stomach: I genuflect. I kneel down before such pleasure, artistry, poetry (lyrical greetings from the kitchen), suspense, playfulness (chips), wittiness (Tegernsee speckled trout on its favourite stone) and fun (the decorative fake ploughman’s lunch is certainly something for foodies) and built on perfect workmanship.

 

Eckhard von Hirschhausen (German entertainer and former doctor) advises that when one has a cold one should wait a few days whilst slurping chicken broth. He is most surprised that this cure has not yet been offered on prescription.

 

My self medication starts with a spontaneous registration in the Überfahrt. To partake of Christian Jürgens chicken broth with galingale as starter potion. For me his gourmet cuisine is additional tasty medicine. For all of us a unique experience.

.

 

1: Überfahrt = ferry crossing

2: Wandsbecker Bote or Wandsbecker Messenger, a newspaper of the period

3: FAZ: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, leading German daily newspaper