Les Deux

Sauce kept close to the pass

Sauce sat under direct judgment for Edip Sigl, head chef at Les Deux in Munich from 2019 to 2021, after joining the kitchen in 2013. His own sentence, “Soße ist bei mir Chefsache,” places the reduction, the gloss, and the final seasoning near the chef rather than down the line. At Les Deux, that discipline met the Kieffers’ dual house in the Schäfflerhof: brasserie below, fine-dining room above, modern French cooking set inside Munich’s Altstadt.

Sigl’s line into the room had already passed through Gut Lärchenhof, Hugos in Berlin, Residenz Heinz Winkler in Aschau im Chiemgau, and Juan Amador in Langen from 2008. Les Deux became the Munich station in that progression. He worked there from 2013 to 2019, then held the head-chef post from 2019 to 2021. The second Michelin star for Les Deux came in 2020, during that period, and belongs to that house and that address. Sigl later moved to ES:SENZ at Das Achental Resort, but the Les Deux years remain part of the same discipline: clarity before display, sauce work close to the pass, and a kitchen measured by timing as much as by composition.

Black cod, eel dashi, and a cellar of 600 labels

The current Les Deux kitchen works in a modern French register with international inflection, offering a tasting menu and à la carte rather than a single fixed route through the meal. One dish gives the grammar plainly: black cod with eel dashi, parmesan, spinach, and peanut. It is not fusion as decoration. The plate asks a rich fish to carry smoke, salt, dairy depth, leaf, and nut, then relies on proportion to keep the line clean.

Other plates named from the room show the same appetite for contrast: Wagyu steak tartare with duck liver as ice cream, autumn truffle, and quail egg; Majorcan prawns on frothy bisque with ratatouille; monkfish with tomato, bloody dock, and saffron. The brasserie keeps its own tempo with beef tartare, gnocchi with asparagus and black tiger prawns, gazpacho, steamed cod, risotto with chicken breast, and Iberico pork with potato puree. Vincent Leblond leads the wine program and restaurant floor, with a list of more than 600 labels. For a room working in sauces, shellfish, dashi, liver, and truffle, that depth is not ornamental. It gives the pass another tool.

The triangular room above Schäfflerhof

The fine-dining room sits upstairs in a triangular glass structure, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking across the movement of the old town. The shape matters. Service crosses a room that narrows and opens by angle; the pass sends out plates into light, glass, beige cloth, cream napkins, and city reflection. Below, the brasserie keeps the house more public, with a courtyard terrace and the easier cadence of a modern bistro.

That split is the working idea of Les Deux. Katrin and Fabrice Kieffer built a house with two speeds, not two identities: the counterpoint of brasserie and starred restaurant, the same address handling lunch, groups, couples, and the longer meal upstairs. The tone is formal without stiffness. Conversation stays possible. In the glass room, a dish like black cod with eel dashi reads against Munich stone and street movement, which is part of the point at Schäfflerhof.