Max Strohe at Tulus Lotrek: Berlin’s most relaxed Michelin restaurant, uncensored

Tulus Lotrek Berlin smells of brown butter, good wine and mischief. Max Strohe cooks against stiff fine dining, Ilona Scholl runs the room like a party. Is this Kreuzberg’s most human Michelin star?

The first thing you notice at Tulus Lotrek Berlin is the sound. Laughter. Glasses clinking, chairs scraping, a Prince track humming low in the background. No hushed temple of haute cuisine. You sit down, the velvet of the banquette catches your coat, and a warm wave of roasted meat, yeast butter and reduced jus rolls across the room. This place is not trying to impress you with silence. It is trying to feed you.

You look around. Deep greens and dark wood. Framed prints, a bit eccentric, a bit baroque. Candles burn low, the wax almost dripping on the table. You can smell duck skin hitting the pan in the open kitchen. That specific Maillard note: toasted, faintly sweet, almost nutty. Someone at the next table cuts through a piece of meat; the knife slides with a soft hiss, not a crunch. There is tension here, but it is not stiff. It is appetite.

The Protagonists: Max Strohe & Ilona Scholl

Behind this room, behind the kitchen pass where the plates stack like a small architectural skyline, are two people: chef Max Strohe and front-of-house mastermind Ilona Scholl. You might know his face from television. You might know hers from the way she glides through the room, reading a table before it even raises a hand. They did not come up through the usual polished path of hotel schools and corporate brigades.

Strohe, self-deprecating and sharp, is the former school dropout who ended up with a Michelin star in Kreuzberg. A guy who looks more like he should run a punk bar than a fine-dining kitchen, yet picked up serious praise from guides like Gault&Millau for a style that rejects the usual starched performance. His cooking has weight. Fat. Acid. Smoke. There is always a little chaos in the flavor, never in the execution.

Ilona Scholl is the conspirator on the floor. She talks fast, thinks faster, and has turned the service into something like curated anarchy. You feel looked after, but never managed. She pours a splash more wine when the story at the table gets good. She cracks a joke when you ask a too-serious question about a sauce. And yet, beneath that laissez-faire façade, everything runs with clockwork precision: pacing, wine pairings, temperature, the timing between courses.

Together they built Tulus Lotrek into one of Berlin’s most personality-driven restaurants. That personality has not gone unnoticed. Strohe has become a familiar face on German food television. Scholl and Strohe, as a duo, have also stepped beyond plates and glasses. Their commitment to social issues, from refugee support to pandemic relief projects, led to public recognition up to the level of the Federal Cross of Merit for their engagement. From school dropout and service rebel to decorated citizens of the republic: the arc is improbable, and that is exactly why this restaurant feels alive.

Culinary Analysis: Undogmatic, Precise, Never Tweezer-Obsessed

The current menu at Tulus Lotrek changes with the seasons, but the philosophy stays clear. You get a structured tasting menu, with enough choices to keep control freaks calm. Expect six to eight courses, plus the optional extras you absolutely should not skip. You will not find minimalist Nordic plates with three dots of purée and a fragile shard of something dehydrated. You will find abundance, but edited. Nothing is on the plate just to show off a technique.

Imagine an early course built around beetroot and aged goat cheese. Sounds harmless. Here, it is not. The beet comes roasted until its sugars concentrate, then lacquered in its own reduction, a deep garnet glaze that stains your fork. There is a goat cheese cream with a slight barnyard funk, cut by a bright line of lemon zest. Pickled stems snap under your teeth. A roasted hazelnut crumb gives crunch and toasted aroma. The plate looks composed but never fussy. If there are tweezers, they are working in the background, not on your Instagram feed.

A fish course might feature char or skrei in the colder months, skin rendered audibly crisp. As you cut, you hear the smallest crackle before the knife glides through glossy, almost trembling flesh. Underneath, a sauce built like a classic beurre blanc, but punched up with something rogue: maybe smoked eel oil, maybe a fermented note that lingers on the back of your tongue. On the side, a cabbage leaf so thoroughly basted in butter and jus that it hums with umami. It is refined, yet it eats like food, not like a design exercise.

The meat courses at Tulus Lotrek are where Strohe’s love for depth really shows. Picture a piece of dry-aged beef, or perhaps saddle of venison in game season. The crust is dark, aromatic, infused with roasted garlic and thyme. You bring the fork up and there is that faint smell of iron, of seared protein, of caramelized fat. The jus is reduced until it moves slowly on the plate, almost like oil. Bitter notes from chicory or charred onion cut the richness. Instead of 14 decorative elements, you might have three or four: a precise purée, something sour, something bitter, something crunchy.

And then, the dishes that people talk about long after the check: Strohe’s take on the burger, for instance, referenced often in interviews. He approaches it like a high-end sauce, not a fast-food item. The bun grilled in butter, the patty medium, juices pooling and threatening your shirt. Cheese that actually melts into the meat, binding it in a salty, elastic layer. Onions sweated then flashed to pick up color, with that sweet Maillard depth. Acid from pickles, maybe a smoked mayonnaise on the side. It is not on every menu, not always in the same shape, but the idea of that perfect burger runs through his cooking: pleasure first, concept second.

You taste this undogmatic attitude across the menu. There is no rigid regional dogma, no strict French orthodoxy, no trend-chasing quota of koji and kombucha. Instead, an informed freedom. Techniques from classic French kitchens, spices from Levantine markets, a wink to pub food, a nod to grandmothers. The plating is deliberate, but you never feel like you are eating from a mood board.

Media & Digital Echo: From Kitchen Impossible to Your Screen

If you have seen Max Strohe on TV shows like "Kitchen Impossible", you already know the energy he brings to a challenge: resistant to pretension, quick with sarcasm, yet deadly serious when it comes to taste. Those appearances have turned him into one of the better-known chef personalities in Germany, without sanding down the rough edges that make him interesting. On screen, as in his restaurant, you sense a refusal to play the polite, interchangeable celebrity chef.

Curious how his intensity translates to video, from chaotic cooking duels to behind-the-scenes insights? Search Max Strohe clips on YouTube

If you want to see the food in full color before you book, from glossy sauces to the famous bread service and the wine-fueled room, scroll through the visual noise and pick your favorites. Discover visual impressions on Instagram

And if you care about the debates around fine dining, Berlin’s restaurant politics, and Strohe’s own outspoken positions, follow the digital back-and-forth here. Follow the latest discussions on X

His media presence loops back into the restaurant in an interesting way. People arrive with expectations formed by television drama and social feeds. At Tulus Lotrek, those expectations are disarmed with humor. A self-aware comment on "tweezer food" here, an extra spoonful of sauce there. You feel like you are in on a joke about fine dining, not the butt of it.

Atmosphere & Service: The Michelin-Starred Living Room

Why do guests keep comparing Tulus Lotrek to a living room? It is not only the dim light and plush fabrics. It is the way your body relaxes after ten minutes. The chairs have actual cushioning. The tables are close enough to catch snippets of your neighbor’s drama, but not so close you feel watched. There is background music, audible and unapologetic. Sometimes hip hop, sometimes 80s pop, sometimes something that sounds like it was pulled from Scholl’s personal playlist.

The staff speaks to you like a person, not a reservation number. You are not asked how you "find" the dish; you are asked if you liked it, if you are hungry for more bread, if the wine is doing what you hoped. Explanations of the menu are short, pointed, and, when needed, funny. If you want to geek out about the sauce technique or the Gault&Millau rating, they can go deep. If you just want another glass of something white and cold, they respect that too.

The feel-good atmosphere is engineered, but it never feels staged. A small draft when the door opens, the creak of the floorboards, the way a corner table becomes an impromptu birthday party at 10 p.m. You sense that the restaurant allows things to happen, rather than controlling every gesture. Casual fine dining here means you can wear sneakers, tell a loud story, and still eat food worthy of a Michelin guide in Berlin Kreuzberg.

Conclusion & Verdict: Why Tulus Lotrek Matters in Berlin

In a city packed with concepts, Tulus Lotrek stands out by feeling disarmingly human. It holds its Michelin star, attracts strong Gault&Millau Berlin praise, shows up in "best of" lists, yet refuses the standard script of fine dining austerity. You get technical excellence but also gravy on the plate. You get a serious wine list, but also jokes. You get a chef with a Federal Cross of Merit and a history of TV duels, and a host who might talk to you about politics, punk, or just the dessert.

For the Berlin food scene, this restaurant is a proof of concept: you can be ambitious without being cold. You can treat guests as friends without losing precision. You can cook with everything you know—classical technique, street food instinct, global pantry—without slipping into gimmickry. If you care about where Berlin gastronomy is going, you should sit in this room, feel the weight of the cutlery, hear the crackle from the pan, taste that slow-cooked jus, and decide for yourself.

And when you finally stand up, slightly flushed from the pairings, coat smelling faintly of roasted meat and candle smoke, you understand why people call Tulus Lotrek a living room with a Michelin star. It is not perfect. It is better. It is alive.

@ ad-hoc-news.de