Tobias Bätz

The Path

Since 2019, Tobias Bätz has held the head-chef role at AURA by Alexander Herrmann & Tobias Bätz in Wirsberg. The position is defined by a regional center of gravity, but the cooking is not bound by it. Franconian sourcing gives the kitchen its ground, while broader technique keeps the work precise, controlled, and open to pressure. Read that way, the path looks less like advancement for its own sake than a steady tightening of method.

The Work Today

At AURA by Alexander Herrmann & Tobias Bätz in Wirsberg, the kitchen is built on Franconian ingredients and shaped with international techniques. That pairing matters: the local product supplies the starting point, while technique supplies structure, contrast, and finish. The result stays identifiable as regional cooking, but it is not left sitting still. The ANIMA Lab is the technical core of that work. Fermentation, drying, maturing, pickling, and smoking are used there as working methods, not decorative touches. Each one extends what the kitchen can do with seasonality and storage, bringing preservation, concentration, patience, and controlled change into the room. In Bätz’s hands, those processes do not overwrite the ingredient; they sharpen it. The regional frame also comes from home cooking already fixed in memory. “Since my earliest childhood, the classic Sunday roast, especially Schäufele with dumpling, has connected me with my region.” That is a direct line from family table to professional kitchen, where the reference point is not abstraction but repetition, scent, and familiarity. Another sentence carries the same weight: “Clearly, schnitzel with sautéed potatoes and hollandaise sauce from my grandmother. Often copied, but never reached.” It names the standard plainly, and in doing so shows how deeply a home dish can set the terms for later work. At AURA by Alexander Herrmann & Tobias Bätz, technique and attachment are doing the same job. Franconian produce is treated with care, then moved through methods that intensify flavor without breaking its connection to origin. The kitchen reads as an ongoing exchange between region, memory, and precision.

Signature

Tobias's signature dishes include AURA by Alexander Herrmann & Tobias Bätz.

In Their Words “Clearly, schnitzel with sautéed potatoes and hollandaise sauce from my grandmother. Often copied, but never reached.” “Since my earliest childhood, the classic Sunday roast, especially Schäufele with dumpling, has connected me with my region.”

Acclaim

The clearest dated recognition in Bätz’s career is his 2017 membership in Jeunes Restaurateurs. It sits alongside two major role markers: head chef at Restaurant Alexander Herrmann by Tobias Bätz in 2009, and head chef at AURA by Alexander Herrmann & Tobias Bätz from 2019 to the present. Taken together, those points mark a career tied to Wirsberg and to regional cooking, with the current kitchen organized around the ANIMA Lab’s fermentation, drying, maturing, pickling, and smoking to work local ingredients with greater definition.