Some chefs see themselves as artists. But not Marco Ortolani. The Italian chef, who helms Eden Kitchen & Bar in La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich, considers himself more of an artisan than an artist.
It has the same first three letters—art—but the meaning is completely different,” Ortolani explains, sitting in Eden Kitchen & Bar before the dinner service on an unusually warm February day. “Being an artisan means I am able to use my hands. In our jobs as chefs, it is important to first learn how to use your hands. Then, you learn how to use your heart. Once you can combine your hands and your heart, that makes you an artist. But so far, I am still learning.”
Ortolani frequently references humility throughout our conversation, underscoring the importance of teamwork when it comes to succeeding in the culinary landscape. Perhaps it is because he didn’t become a chef until later than is typical for the career. Instead, after enlisting in the Alpini (the Italian Army’s specialist mountain infantry), Ortolani went to language school and traveled before eventually enrolling in the Italian culinary school CAST Alimenti in his mid-20s.
“When you’re 15 years old, you don’t have a clear mind to decide what you want to do and what you want to be,” he says. “You have to have the capacity to learn your path, and then you can become a chef.”
Before joining La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich in 2019, Ortolani worked in big cities, including London, Hong Kong and Milan, where he learned from storied chefs like Alberico Penati and Alain Ducasse. In his late 20s, Ortolani became sous chef for Penati at 5 Hertford Street, an elite London members club that, he says, emphasized even higher standards than some three-Michelin-starred restaurants. “Depending on which kind of membership you had, everything was complimentary, so somehow we were 15 or 16 chefs cooking for 10 or 20 guests,” he remembers. “The pressure was so high.”
Moving on to Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, which has three stars, Ortolani felt even more pressure. It was long hours and vast numbers of diners for lunch and dinner. Looking back, the chef calls the experience his “second military school.”
“The army was nothing compared to that,” he laughs. “The army was a joke. Working in these restaurants was really, really tough.”
Still, it was in London that Ortolani learned the value of top-quality ingredients, something he has incorporated into his cooking ever since. “Everything was super fresh and all the best quality,” he says. “Everything was the best of the best. In those days in London, it was even better than Italy.”
Over the years, Ortolani’s career has also taken him to Milan, where he was a chef at the Armani Hotel Milano, and to Tuscany, where he ran the kitchen at L’Andana under chef Enrico Bartolini. There, Ortolani had access to cows, gardens and olive trees—an essential asset for a chef who emphasizes quality and sustainability. While Zurich is a city, he says its lakeside location and the local ingredients available in Switzerland help to retain that countryside sensibility.
“Even though you’re in an international town, you have this connection with nature,” Ortolani explains. “This is why I love Switzerland and why I would probably not go back to a metropolis like Hong Kong or Dubai. You still have this contact with the suppliers and with the small farmers. You can bike for 20 minutes along the lake, and you’re at a small farm. It is a small country, but there is a lot to discover.”
At Eden Kitchen & Bar, which earned its first Michelin star in 2020 within months of opening, Ortolani incorporates his Italian heritage with techniques he’s learned from around the world. Most of his team at the restaurant is from Italy, but Ortolani also wants the Italian-inspired menu to embrace Switzerland and to celebrate what’s available there. It helps that the chef is from Varese, an Italian city not far from the Swiss border and Lugano, although since moving to Zurich, he’s realized how little he knew about Switzerland overall. “I’ve really pushed to understand the [German] language and to integrate myself,” he notes. “I feel I want to give back something to this town.”
Ortolani has discovered several ingredients in Zurich and the surrounding areas, including fish from Lake Zurich, such as trout and pike, and mountain herbs from the Alps. In autumn, the chef spotlights wild game, including grouse, venison and partridge. He looks for local suppliers rather than relying on big farm chains, which helps to ensure his meat is free of antibiotics.
“I believe that the sustainable part of this job is to maintain this balance between nature and animals, and ourselves,” he says. “The more you take, the more you have to give back. People really appreciate how we present the game [in the fall]. We try to be a modern restaurant, but with knowledge of classics. We respect the classic things and then we can make a reinterpretation in our way.”
Everything about dining in Eden Kitchen feels contemporary. There are no linen tablecloths, the atmosphere is lively and there is a continuity between the restaurant and the bar that keeps things relatively casual. The menu is à la carte, with no tasting menu available (Ortolani feels that tasting menus are too much about a chef’s ego than a guest’s experience). The chefs often cleverly interpret classic dishes into something surprising, like the squid carbonara appetizer. Instead of pasta, Ortolani swaps in thinly cut squid noodles paired with crispy guanciale, quail egg yolk and truffle. It tastes like a traditional carbonara, but has a lighter, fresher quality.
Since Eden Kitchen debuted, one of the standout dishes is the paccheri trafilati oro, an indulgent pasta dish with blue lobster. It arrives with a rich sauce that incorporates hints of lemongrass and perfectly al dente noodles from an Italian pasta company called Verrigni, which notably uses gold-drawn pasta. The dish is so good that multiple restaurants in Zurich have copied it, much to Ortolani’s annoyance. He tried taking it off the menu, but the guests pushed for its return, and now it features the title “The One and Only.” Also impossible to take off the menu: the burger.
“My colleagues might be upset if I say I am most proud of the burger, but it’s the burger,” Ortolani says, grinning. “Eden Kitchen is a Michelin restaurant where we serve a burger. And it’s nothing fancy, really. There’s no foie gras, no wagyu. It’s just a really good burger. We serve it with rösti fries to give it a twist of Switzerland.”
Like the paccheri trafilati oro, the burger is designated on the menu as the “Best in Town,” a knowing wink from the chef. Despite these cheeky claims, Ortolani believes in putting the guests and his team first. He’s not in the kitchen to be the star. He oversees 35 chefs in the hotel across its two restaurants and wants everything, from the breakfast to the bar food, to achieve a high standard. He says he’s not interested in success, specifically, but in always doing things well.
“Marco Pierre White said success is born out of arrogance, greatness is born out of humility,” Ortolani says. “To succeed in something is having consistency every day, having value every day, having integrity every day, being super respectful of our guests. And in the meantime, my goal is to create the next generation of chefs. I’m not scared that my sous chef can become better than me. I chose them because they’re better than me. Supporting my team is the most beautiful part of my job, after making the guest happy and making the place alive and vibrant.”
He pauses and adds, “Hotels and restaurants are made by people. Without us, they are just a building.”
