The Counter

Mitja Birlo at the open counter

A celeriac tower rises in slices, roasted, puréed, and cut into pastrami-like layers, while Mitja Birlo, Chef de Cuisine at The Counter in Zürich, works from the open pass. The room gives the guest no distance from the method. Birlo came to this station after cooking at 7132 Silver in Vals, a two-Michelin-starred house, and brought with him a cosmopolitan register that now sits inside Zurich’s main train station rather than in an alpine resort. He was born in Berlin in 1985, earned Gault & Millau Chef of the Year 2022, and now leads a counter format where the hands remain visible from the first course to the last.

The restaurant does not turn his biography into decoration. It lets the bench do that work. The surprise menu, the open kitchen, the tight service rhythm, and the view across the pass all put pressure on the same thing: every gesture has to hold up at close range. Birlo’s wife manages service and the wine selection, keeping the evening in step with the kitchen’s pace, while Birlo holds the culinary line.

Seventeen courses at arm’s length

The Counter is built around a 17-course tasting menu, served to guests seated around the kitchen rather than hidden from it. That architecture changes the discipline. A sauce cannot be corrected out of sight; a quenelle, slice, glaze, or garnish meets the room as soon as the hand leaves the station. The menu moves through smaller and larger delicacies, with East Asian influence folded into a European fine-dining frame. Shaved ice appears as a palate-cleansing course. Seafood arrives with caviar. Quail carries the game register. Pear and chocolate close the sweet side with restraint.

The celeriac dish shows the kitchen’s method most clearly. Birlo uses the root in more than one state, roasted slice, aromatic purée, and a pastrami-style tower, then sets it against beetroot and pepper. The point is not novelty for its own sake. It is transformation by cut, heat, seasoning, and sequence. Even the bread program enters the progression as 48-hour bread, a small course with enough time inside it to belong at the counter.

The room around the pass

The Counter sits discreetly at Bahnhofplatz 15, within the movement of Zürich Hauptbahnhof, yet the room itself is quiet, modern, and pared back. The setting matters because it sharpens the contrast: outside, trains and city traffic; inside, a sterile, odorless kitchen, a low room, and a counter that turns dinner into bench-side observation. The format allows up to 23 diners, close enough to see reductions, plating, and the small resets between courses.

Service stays warm without breaking the concentration of the pass. Wine pairings and alcohol-free pairings run alongside the tasting menu, not as a separate performance but as part of the same progression. The best seat is not a table. It is the line of sight across The Counter’s open kitchen.