Rico’s Kunststuben

Spice before construction

Special spices come before the plate is fully built, and Rico Zandonella, Chef at Rico’s Kunststuben in Küsnacht, Zürich, uses them to turn product into structure. His own description of the method is direct: “I try to always find the best products, the current products, the salt products, and with special spices my dish is created.” At this house, that sentence is less a manifesto than a working order.

Zandonella has held the kitchen here since 2011, after the long apprenticeship of proximity that came before it. From 1981 to 2011, he worked alongside Horst Petermann at Petermann’s Kunststuben in the same Swiss town, learning a discipline grounded in classical French haute cuisine before taking full authorship of the address. The handover changed the name, not the seriousness of the bench. Rico’s Kunststuben still carries two Michelin stars, held at this house, with Zandonella’s cooking now moving the old vocabulary toward color, aroma, and a lighter Mediterranean edge.

The lineage matters because it sits in the same rooms. A restaurant once known through Petermann’s name now carries Zandonella’s, and the continuity is physical as well as culinary: one Küsnacht address, one accumulated discipline, one chef working inside a house that has not needed reinvention to stay alive.

Goose liver set into pattern

The kitchen’s register shows most clearly when richness is divided, sharpened, and rebuilt. The Mosaik of goose liver with apple jelly takes fat and sweetness, then sets them into a pattern rather than letting either dominate. Fried scallops wrapped in bacon on asparagus with tangerine cinnamon oil works by contrast: shellfish against smoke and fat, green vegetable against citrus, warm spice at the edge. Fried halibut with vegetables, lemongrass and sesame cracker keeps the fish legible while adding aromatic lift and a crisp finish.

This is modern French fine dining with Mediterranean pressure points, not a rejection of the classical base. The format allows tasting menu, set menu, and à la carte work, which gives the kitchen room to repeat certain gestures while changing the sequence around them. Zandonella favors construction over minimalism. He has said of Ticino cooking, “The Ticino cuisine is too simple for me and ultimately it is only a variation of Italian cuisine, which is much more refined and more varied.” The sentence explains the appetite for breadth here: sauces, vinaigrettes, spice, acidity, heat, and texture all kept in play.

A room that kept the art

The room answers the plates without copying them. Rico’s Kunststuben occupies a 19th-century building that once served as an art gallery, and the name still carries that memory: Kunststuben, art room. Inside, the space is intimate, colorful, and dense with decorative detail, closer to a worked collection than a neutral dining room. The mood is formal in service, conversational in sound, and more cheerful than hushed.

That matters during the pass. A plate with tangerine cinnamon oil or apple jelly does not arrive in a bare white chamber; it enters a room already tuned to color and object. The art is not a theme placed over the cooking. It is the house’s old material, kept in use while Zandonella’s kitchen adds its own pattern to Rico’s Kunststuben.