Der Öschberghof

The pass sets the house in motion

The pass sets the pace for Gregor Schuber, Chef at Der Öschberghof in Donaueschingen, before the wider house has fully gathered itself. Since 2018, Schuber has held the Küchendirektor post here, a station that asks for more than a single dining room’s rhythm. The kitchen has to carry a resort day from breakfast through the evening pass, across several registers of service, without letting the hand disappear into scale.

Schuber came to that responsibility through German hotel kitchens rather than a narrow restaurant ascent. Earlier posts at Breidenbacher Hof in Düsseldorf and Jakobsberg in Boppard, Rheinland-Pfalz, gave him time inside established houses, moving through souschef work and into leiter der küche responsibility before Donaueschingen. At Der Öschberghof, that route matters. A hotel kitchen does not reward spectacle for long. It rewards mise en place that holds, a brigade that understands transfer between stations, and a director who can keep the morning program, the fine-dining pass, and the less formal tables in the same discipline.

Five kitchens, one discipline

The culinary program at the house is built across 5 restaurants and a BAR. ÖSCH NOIR carries 2 Michelin stars and 17 Gault Millau points, while ESSZIMMER works in a more seasonal, regional register. RISTORANTE & PIZZERIA HEXENWEIHER moves toward Italian cooking; ÖVENTHÜTTE keeps an alpine line; TANÖSHI handles sushi and Japanese specialities. The point is not variety for its own sake. The method is repetition under different pressures.

That spread changes the work of the Küchendirektor. A sauce reduced for one room cannot simply become the language of another. Dough, rice, stock, breakfast production, and plated tasting-menu timing all ask for separate attention, then return to the same question: who is at the station, and what has been prepared before service begins. The house also keeps an Önothek for rare bottles, which places the dining program near the cellar without turning every table into fine dining. Schuber’s role sits at that join, where hotel logistics meet kitchen judgment.

Grayscale rooms and long sightlines

The house gives the work space to breathe. Der Öschberghof sits on 200 hectares at the edge of the Black Forest, with a 45-Loch golfanlage outside and a 5,000 qm SPA inside the resort’s daily pattern. The design is modern and grayscale, clear-lined rather than ornate, with light-filled rooms, lounges with fireplaces, and terraces that look back toward the courses. Noise stays low. The floor has the feel of a place arranged for recovery as much as arrival.

That quiet affects the kitchen. Guests move from the course, the spa, the tasting room, or the conference floor, and the pass has to meet each pace without announcing the effort. The house began in 1976 as a modest clubhaus with a 9-Loch golfplatz and a few rooms; its present scale asks the kitchen to remember that origin while working at resort volume. In the evening, the most exacting expression of that memory still lands on the plates at ÖSCH NOIR.