Honest food tastes best

For eleven months of the year, Restaurant Ikarus in Hangar-7 is wholly dedicated to its unique guest chef concept. However, the 31 days making up the festival month of August are an exception: it is not one of the best chefs from Los Angeles, Copenhagen or Tokyo who is in charge. In fact, it is the Ikarus Team itself that takes the reins in the kitchen, presenting a menu that allows the chefs to show off their skills and the invaluable versatility that they have gained as a result of their collaboration with the guest chefs.

A menu that bears all the hallmarks of Executive Chef Martin Klein’s culinary principles: product awareness, attention to detail and, above all, honesty.

The Strasbourg-born chef began his management career at the Marstall restaurant in Munich, where he cooked his way to his first Michelin star in 2002. The following year, he took on the role of head chef at Restaurant Ikarus, becoming a member of the launch team. He worked here for a total of nine years, ensuring creativity within the restaurant and taking charge of its culinary compositions until 2012, when he left for the position of Executive Chef on Laucala Island, an exclusive private island in the South Pacific, where he spent two years conjuring up culinary delights for the island’s demanding guests.

In January 2014, Martin Klein returned to his home from home: Hangar-7 in Salzburg. When he received the offer to work as Executive Chef at Restaurant Ikarus, he didn’t need to think twice. In this role, he acts as something of a culinary ambassador for the restaurant. He selects the guest chefs together with his patron, Eckart Witzigmann, and spends the year travelling the world, visiting top chefs in their hometowns in order to get to know them personally and to prepare the menu for their month-long guest chef.

As head of the almost 50-strong Ikarus Team, Martin Klein also ensures the smooth running of his own kitchen, a task for which the self-professed team player can, of course, rely on the support of his most trusted associates: the two head chefs Jörg Bruch and Tommy Eder and service chef Matthias Berger.

It was with great delight that Klein discovered that over the last few years, the basic principles of Restaurant Ikarus have been growing in popularity in the world of international haute cuisine: