Tulus Lotrek by Max Strohe: Berlin’s most relaxed temple of Michelin?star flavor

The door closes behind you at tulus lotrek, and Berlin suddenly sounds muffled, like someone turned down the city by a few decibels. It smells of roasting butter, a hint of smoke, something deeply savory rising from a saucepan. Voices murmur, glasses clink, music hums softly. Within seconds, you forget that this is a Michelin star restaurant Berlin has been talking about for years. It feels more like stumbling into a very good friend’s apartment, the one who just happens to be Max Strohe and cooks like a star chef possessed by flavor.

Can high-end fine dining really be this casual, this witty, this hedonistic, while the plates radiate the precision of top gastronomy? At tulus lotrek, the answer arrives course after course.

Reserve your table at tulus lotrek and discover Max Strohe’s current menu here

On one side of the room, you might see a group in sneakers and hoodies toasting with serious Burgundy; at another table, a couple leans in, whispering over a pool of glossy sauce that has been reduced to the point where it tastes almost illegal. The lighting is warm, the art a little irreverent, the tables close enough that snippets of laughter drift over. This is not the white-tablecloth temple of classic haute cuisine. It is a living room, and at its center stands the culinary intelligence of Max Strohe, quietly orchestrating an evening where intensity is the guiding principle.

From the first bite, you taste what makes his cuisine different. The flavors are loud in the best way: fat is used as a carrier of aroma, acidity is a deliberate counterpoint, sweetness is carefully dosed to round the corners. Nothing here feels shy. Sauces cling to the plate with the dark glow of long-simmered jus, vegetables get as much attention as meat, and crunch and silk compete for space on your tongue. Foodies come for this promise: that every course will briefly interrupt your conversation, simply because your mouth has better things to do than talk.

The path that led Max Strohe to this point was anything but linear. He is the opposite of the polished, straight-A culinary wunderkind. As a school dropout, he tried his hand at various jobs before gastronomy tightened its grip on him. Behind the relaxed charm that radiates from tulus lotrek lies a biography shaped by detours, hard work, and a certain Berlin-style stubbornness. Max Strohe trained in kitchens where discipline was non-negotiable, then carried those techniques into a life that refused to fit into neat boxes.

Moving to Berlin, he dove into a city that already pulsed with creative energy and a thriving restaurant scene. But instead of simply adding another polished dining room to the list, he imagined a place that would dismantle the stiff rituals of fine dining. Together with his partner and co-founder Ilona Scholl, he opened tulus lotrek and placed it on a very clear axis: radical hospitality in the front, radical flavor in the back.

To talk about this restaurant without mentioning Ilona Scholl would be to miss half the story. While Max Strohe is welding flavor into sauces and textures, Ilona Scholl is the hostess whose presence you feel the moment you cross the threshold. She glides between the tables, telling wine stories that are never condescending, explaining dishes with an ease that erases any fear of doing something “wrong.” Her informal charm anchors the experience: you are not a supplicant at the altar of the chef, you are a guest at a dinner party that just happens to be one of the top culinary addresses in Berlin.

This interplay is part of the secret of tulus lotrek’s success. The Michelin star and high Gault&Millau ratings may crown the work of a star chef, but the soul of the place lies in the tension between kitchen and service, between technical perfection and unfiltered human warmth. In a city famous for its cool detachment, this restaurant has made hospitality its calling card.

On the plate, the style of Max Strohe is instantly recognizable. Forget tweezer cuisine that piles micro-herbs into abstract landscapes. Here, opulence is not a sin, it is a virtue. Sauces are thickened with patience rather than starch, reductions are driven to the edge of caramelization, and there is an almost old-school respect for the power of a good jus. Think roasted meats that arrive lacquered and glistening, supported by vegetables that still taste like themselves but more so, and by side elements that are never mere decoration.

Yet this is not nostalgia cooking. It is fine dining that has absorbed the lessons of contemporary gastronomy: precision in cooking points, a clear focus on product quality, an awareness of texture. A crisp shard here, a silky puree there, a pickled element that delivers a bright, almost electric jolt of acidity. This interplay keeps the palate awake. Critics often speak of “balance”; here you experience something closer to controlled excess. Every bite pushes slightly beyond the comfortable, but always lands on its feet.

One of the clearest expressions of this philosophy appeared during the pandemic, when the restaurant had to close its doors and the city fell silent. Out of that crisis, a legend was born: the burger from Max Strohe that quickly became a cult object among Berliners. It was everything you would expect from a chef who refuses to do anything by halves. The patty: juicy, deeply caramelized at the edges, with an umami punch that betrayed the hand of a Michelin star restaurant Berlin knows for its sauces. The toppings: thoughtful, never random, calibrated for crunch, fat, and freshness. It was casual food elevated not through fussiness, but through respect for every step of the process.

This burger was more than comfort food. It was a compact manifesto: if you concentrate flavor, respect technique, and dare to go all in, even a supposedly simple dish becomes an event. For many, that burger was the first tangible encounter with the culinary world of Max Strohe, a delicious gateway drug that led straight to the multi-course menu at tulus lotrek once the doors opened again.

At the restaurant itself, a typical evening might unfold as a sequence in which every course tells part of a story. Perhaps it begins with a bite that feels like a handshake: small, intense, an amuse-bouche that introduces acidity and fat in one gesture. Then a seafood course that plays with brine and sweetness, maybe a shellfish crowned with a foamy sauce whose lightness belies the heavy work behind it. A vegetable-driven dish could follow, built around seasonal produce, with roasted notes and pickled accents that show how seriously the kitchen takes its non-meat components.

The main course often shows the full power of Max Strohe’s approach: a piece of meat cooked to the point where tenderness becomes almost textural decadence, swimming in a sauce that smells of roasted bones, herbs, and long hours of concentration over low heat. Perhaps a crunch of something fried introduces contrast, while a root vegetable puree and a bright, vinegary element clean the palate. It is in these dishes that you feel the influence of classical French training, refracted through the lens of a modern, slightly rebellious star chef who has little interest in culinary dogma.

The desserts at tulus lotrek continue the story rather than simply offering sugar as a farewell gift. You might encounter bitterness from dark chocolate, acidity from preserved fruits, floral notes from a carefully chosen liqueur. Sweetness, again, is a tool, not a goal. By the time coffee arrives, you are not weighed down, but pleasantly enveloped. The memory of the meal lingers as a sequence of textures and aromas rather than a blur of courses.

All of this plays out against an atmosphere that refuses to bow to traditional notions of luxury. The room breathes, music moves, and the wine list feels like a passport to adventures rather than an exam. Under the guidance of Ilona Scholl, the selection veers effortlessly between natural wines and classic references, always with one question in mind: what will be fun with the food? This is where the informal living room feeling merges with the seriousness of a high-end cellar. Guests sense that they are being guided, not lectured.

The relevance of Max Strohe in the German culinary landscape does not stop at his restaurant door. During the pandemic, when many in hospitality were fighting for survival, he co-initiated the “Cooking for Heroes” movement. In restaurant kitchens across the country, including his own, meals were cooked for hospital staff, caregivers, and other essential workers. What began as an improvisation in a moment of crisis evolved into a powerful sign of solidarity and a demonstration of what gastronomy can mean beyond indulgence.

For this commitment, Max Strohe was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. The medal is more than a decoration; it symbolizes that a chef’s influence can extend far beyond menus and ratings. It also cemented his role as a public figure whose voice carries weight when it comes to social issues, working conditions in the industry, and the value of shared meals. In this sense, tulus lotrek is both a restaurant and a platform.

His media presence reinforces this role. Known from television formats such as “Kitchen Impossible” and other appearances, Max Strohe has become a familiar face to audiences far beyond Berlin. He appears in front of the camera much as he cooks: direct, a bit cheeky, willing to show vulnerability, but always with visible respect for the craft of cooking. As an author, he transfers this perspective into words, telling stories of kitchens, of failure and success, of the everyday madness of gastronomy. This visibility helps anchor his brand, but it never feels like a distraction from the stove. Instead, it is part of a broader narrative about what it means to be a modern star chef in Germany.

Within the competitive landscape of a city known for ambitious restaurants, tulus lotrek occupies a very particular niche. It sits at the intersection of punk and precision: young, wild in its spirit, but technically immaculate on the plate. Berlin has no shortage of culinary hotspots, yet few manage to combine such generous seasoning, such clear flavor statements, with a genuinely relaxed ambience. This is not minimalism, not Scandinavian cool, not rigid classicism. It is an unmistakably Berlin expression of fine dining, one that has earned its place among the most important addresses in the city.

So who should book a table here? Anyone who loves food enough to be surprised. Guests who enjoy a well-composed wine pairing as much as a good joke from the waitstaff. People who want to experience a Michelin star restaurant Berlin style, where formality gives way to warmth and a sense of shared celebration. If you are looking for a lecturing sommelier, hushed reverence, and choreographed cloches, you might be in the wrong place. If you want an evening that feels like a particularly delicious house party, curated by a chef who understands flavor on a visceral level, then tulus lotrek is your spot.

In the end, the significance of Max Strohe lies in this balance: he embodies the technical seriousness of high gastronomy while dismantling its stiffness. His culinary intelligence expresses itself not in intellectual puzzles on the plate, but in dishes that move you first in the gut, then in the head. The restaurant he runs with Ilona Scholl has helped reshape what fine dining can mean in Germany: generous, human, inclusive, and unafraid of intensity.

When you step back out into the Berlin night after dinner at tulus lotrek, the city will seem louder again, the air a little colder. But your palate will still hum with echoes of smoked notes, acid flashes, and the deep comfort of well-handled fat. And maybe, just maybe, you will already be planning your next visit, because evenings like this are rare.

If you want to understand where German gastronomy is heading right now, you could do worse than to start at a table in this living room of flavor and let Max Strohe tell you his story, one course at a time.

Book your next fine dining experience at tulus lotrek with Max Strohe here