Adler

Station discipline at the pass

The plate leaves the pass with precise technique under it: Daniel Fehrenbacher, owner and executive chef at Adler in Lahr, brings that station discipline to a dining room shaped by modern French cooking on the edge of the Black Forest. His culinary education began under Emil Kuntz at Krone Herxheim, then broadened through Landhaus Feckl in Ehningen and Pont de Brent before he returned to Adler in 2006. He took full control of the kitchen in 2019 from his father Otto, continuing a four-generation family line, with Pia Fehrenbacher running the front of house. Adler itself has held one Michelin star since 1990, within Hotel Restaurant Adler, and the room still reads as a family house rather than a freestanding stage set. The restaurant's public story belongs to a four-generation operation, with a formal gourmet restaurant set beside a more casual Gasthaus. Fehrenbacher's place in that structure is at the bench and the pass, where French technique meets regional ingredients without losing the quiet manners of the house.

Modern French work with Black Forest edges

The cooking at Adler is described through modern French technique, regional and seasonal sourcing, and a tasting-menu format. That leaves room for the kitchen's most useful discipline: contrast controlled course by course. Scallop is paired with truffle, blood orange, potato, and hazelnut, a construction that moves from iodine to earth, acid, starch, and crunch without needing ornament for its own sake. Turbot appears with caraway seeds and roasted cauliflower, a more restrained register, built on spice and caramelized vegetable depth. The Schokoladenkugel carries the pastry side of the house more openly: chocolate sphere, passion fruit, caramelized cereal, chili cress. It is a dessert of shell, tang, grain, and heat, the kind of plate that asks the pastry cook to think like a saucier and the savory cook to respect set structure. Adler's wine program is curated, with sommelier Jochen Hünd associated with a selection known for careful advice rather than ceremony. The restaurant also carries 17 Gault Millau points, but the more useful number is the star retained since 1990, because it places the present kitchen inside a long routine of inspection, revision, and repetition.

A quiet room for formal service

The room keeps its volume low. Adler's dining hall is described in chic minimalist terms, but the Black Forest still presses at the edges through the garden, terrace views, and the softer manners of a hotel restaurant that has not severed itself from place. Formal service here does not mean stiffness; it means the choreography stays legible. Plates arrive with enough space around them. Wine moves from the back of the room to the table without turning the exchange into performance. The counterpoint is the Gasthaus elsewhere in the house, a reminder that this address works across more than one register. In the gourmet restaurant, the pace belongs to the tasting menu and to the pass. Quiet helps. It gives the caraway on the turbot, the citrus against scallop, and the crack of the Schokoladenkugel room to register.

The house keeps its long line

Adler matters because its craft is not presented as a reset. The Michelin star has stayed with the restaurant since 1990, and the family structure around the house gives that continuity a practical form: kitchen, dining room, hotel, garden, terrace. Fehrenbacher works inside a place already conditioned by patience, where each new plate has to answer to a long local memory as well as the current menu. If the next movement is not announced, the craft still gives a clear place to end: the Schokoladenkugel at Adler, with passion fruit, caramelized cereal, and chili cress.