Nüman

Duck dumplings in another register

Duck dumplings carry Johanna Nußbaumer , chef at Nüman in Kaunas, into a room far from her Berlin base. The dish belongs to the seasonal modern menu she leads here, where Austrian instincts for welcome and direct flavour meet Lithuanian produce and a Nordic-tuned kitchen. Nußbaumer’s longer line remains Nußbaumerin, the Berlin restaurant she has owned and cooked at since 2008, built around Austrian tradition, family recipes and the kind of hospitality that feeds without ornament. Nüman gives that hand another station. In Kaunas, the work is less about homeland classics than about availability, texture and a plate that changes when the market changes. That continuity matters. She has not left the older vocabulary behind; she has let it travel, pared back and translated through a different pantry.

Seasonal produce, one clean flourish

Nüman works in a former butcher’s shop on Nemuno gatvė, with a kitchen shaped around Nordic fine dining and Lithuanian seasonal ingredients. The menu has moved from an earlier whole-experience tasting format of 12 dishes to the present rhythm of à la carte cooking and set tasting menus, with larger portions and a warmer register. The named plates give the method its outline: beetroot tartare cut against horseradish cream, slow-cooked lamb shank with roots and sauce, duck dumplings, guinea fowl with hand-cut chips. Local sourcing is not treated as decoration here. It supplies the calendar. Spring vegetables, winter roots, regional meats and river fish give the kitchen its limits, and the cooking answers with simplified compositions rather than crowded ones. A curated wine program sits beside the food, with craft cocktails and whisky in the wider beverage register, but the plates keep the lead. The Bib Gourmand held by Nüman in the 2025 Michelin Guide names the same balance the room works toward: quality cooking, restraint and value without lowering the craft.

Stone walls around a quiet pass

The room keeps the old trade in sight. Exposed stone walls mark the former butcher’s shop, softened by light wood, simple lines, warm textiles and framed photography. It is Scandinavian in its restraint rather than its styling alone: the surfaces are calm, the noise stays low, and the counterpoint is the food arriving with colour, heat and sauce. Nüman is small in feel, intimate rather than hushed, with a pace suited to conversation and a service style that stays close without crowding the table. The pass does not need theatre. Beetroot and horseradish, lamb and roots, guinea fowl and chips carry enough movement on their own.

A Kaunas room with its own measure

Nüman’s current importance is local and specific. Kaunas has fewer fine-dining rooms than Vilnius, and this address has become one of the places where the city’s ingredients are handled with ambition without losing their ease. Nußbaumer’s part in that is not a borrowed Berlin story; it is a second context for the same appetite for generous, season-led cooking. Nüman’s duck dumplings are in Kaunas Old Town.