Rico Zandonella

Training at Hotel Ascolago, Ascona set the base for a long run of kitchen work defined by repetition and judgment. Rico Zandonella moved through a sequence of exacting posts that sharpened the same habits in different rooms: cook at Restaurant Suvretta, St. Moritz, cook at Restaurant Crocodile, Strasbourg (1980), cook at Restaurant Agnes Amberg, Zürich (1980), cook at Schloss Herblingen (1980–1981), and cook at Petermann’s Kunststuben, Küsnacht (1981–2011).

The line reads less like a ladder than a sustained apprenticeship, with each kitchen asking for the same discipline in a different form. That history now sits behind the kitchen at Rico’s Kunststuben, where Rico Zandonella has been Head Chef since 2011. The house style comes through as clarity first: structure doing the expressive work, and the plate carrying its point without excess.

The current kitchen is easiest to read in the house dishes, where contrast is used as a working method. Richness, acidity, crispness, and aromatic lift are not separate effects but the basic tools of the plate, and Rico Zandonella uses them to keep each dish moving. A Mosaik of goose liver with apple jelly shows that method plainly. The composition sets fat against fruit and smoothness against a clean sweet line, so the dish stays alert rather than heavy.

Fried scallops wrapped in bacon on asparagus with tangerine cinnamon oil push the same logic through shellfish and smoke, green vegetable and citrus, spice and sear. Fried halibut with vegetables, lemongrass, and sesame cracker works in a different register, but the same discipline holds: delicacy against crunch, fragrance against restraint, with the sesame cracker supplying the brittle counterpoint. Asked about Ticino cuisine, Rico Zandonella said: “The Ticino cuisine is too simple for me and ultimately it is only a variation of Italian cuisine, which is much more refined and much more varied.”

The line points to the kind of kitchen he favors: range over sameness, refinement over shorthand, and dishes that develop through proportion rather than declaration. His own cooking follows that preference closely, with flavors set to meet one another in measured tension.

Rico's signature dishes include Mosaik of goose liver with apple jelly and Fried halibut with vegetables and lemongrass and sesame cracker.

Rico's honors include Guide Michelin: two stars (2011) and Koch des Jahres.