Rico Zandonella

Career Since 2011, Rico’s Kunststuben has carried that approach in a room shaped by precise materials and aromatic detail. The same address, Rico’s Kunststuben in Küsnacht, Zürich, Switzerland, has been Zandonella’s base as Head Chef from 2011 to the present. The measure here is not reinvention but duration: one house, one discipline, and a style refined over time. Before that, he worked alongside Horst Petermann at Petermann’s Kunststuben in the same Swiss town from 1981 to 2011. That thirty-year span reads as continuity under pressure, with technique held steady enough to be adjusted from within. In 2011, Zandonella was Chef de Cuisine at Rico’s Kunststuben, and the same year marks the beginning of his tenure as Head Chef. The handover is important less as a title change than as a shift from close proximity to full authorship.

Signature

His cooking starts with product, then moves through spice and construction. As Zandonella puts it: "I try to always find the best products, the current products, the salt products, and with special spices my dish is created." That approach is visible in the Mosaik of goose liver with apple jelly, one of the house dishes at Rico’s Kunststuben. The plate is built by dividing richness into structure, setting sweetness into a clean gel, and arranging the whole as a pattern rather than a single note. Zandonella has also been blunt about range and refinement: "The Ticino cuisine is too simple for me and ultimately it is only a variation of Italian cuisine, which is much more refined and more varied." The point is clear enough: he favors breadth, detail, and a kitchen that resists narrow shorthand. Three dishes show the register most clearly. Fried scallops wrapped in bacon on asparagus with tangerine cinnamon oil relies on direct contrast: shellfish, smoke and fat, green vegetable, citrus, and warm spice. Fried halibut with vegetables, lemongrass and sesame cracker adds another set of textures, with fish, vegetables, aromatic lift, and a crisp element carrying the finish. Across the plates, the work stays tactile and exact, with each component left legible.

Recognition/etc In 2017, Gault Millau named Zandonella Chef of the Year. The recognition sits on top of a career anchored in one Küsnacht kitchen, from the Petermann years through his own leadership at the restaurant.