Why is it that any conversation about good food so often ends up straying into life’s big questions? We sat down with restauranteur Frederic Jung in Germany’s Bad Tabarz to chat about fusion cuisine in the sticks but quickly moved onto the rural vs urban debate, alternative lifestyles, and how to find balance.

“In trendy places like Berlin, it kind of makes you want to vomit when you see how desperately people are trying to be cool,” says Freddy, on a sunny Wednesday morning. “It’s exhausting; you can’t be your true self there. You end up playing a character that everyone expects to see.” Frederic Jung, most commonly referred to as Freddy, clearly doesn’t want to be part of that scene and has no doubts about his character – it’s the same character that chose to run Anno 1700 in Bad Tabarz, in the heart of rural Thuringia, and not Berlin. Describing Bad Tabarz sounds like a tourist brochure: it’s one of those sleepy idylls, sat at the foot of the Rennsteig and nestling in the verdant green hills of the Thuringian forest. With two churches, cutesy post-boxes, and a traditional guesthouse, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it feels like time has stood still. Bad Tabarz, like the rest of Thuringia, hones in on its strengths: hearty, wholesome dishes, a family-friendly outdoor scene, cultural events, and things to see like the UNESCO-listed Wartburg Castle in Eisenach and the Bauhaus in Weimar – if you were looking for a vibrant gastro scene, this wouldn’t be your first choice. Unless, of course, you’re Freddy and you end up taking over the reins of your family restaurant in this green fleck in the middle of Germany. His aim: refresh our attitude towards gastronomy and life.

You end up coming home and it feels right to do something, to create something for your local region.

Hometown love and the Orient

With his undercut and musketeer beard, Freddy wouldn’t look out of place in the trendy parts of Berlin. Languishing on his cigarette, the 32-year-old with a weakness for ASICS trainers greets us outside the restaurant, with his daily blueberry smoothie in his left hand. From the outside, the lovingly restored three-storey half-timbered house with creamy-coloured plaster and red windows doesn’t scream revolution. The vibe is more rustic, more of a cosy, tuck-in-for-the-evening sort of place, which is exactly why Freddy’s parents gave it the name of Romantik-Schenke, which is German for romantic tavern, back in the 1990s. They didn’t base the name on a traditional home-cooking style of the cuisine, as you could presume from the 18th-century walls; back then, their speciality was seafood, oysters, and fresh lobster – caught in their own babbling streams. Freddy is vehemently against the seafood menu, and not just for environmental reasons. The sorts of food that get the Michelin stars – like foie gras and caviar – that have to be flown halfway around the world simply wouldn’t enter his lexicon.

If you reject things on a personal level, it changes the way you live your life. In my case, it affects the menu, our produce, and the way that our food makes its way onto your plate.

Grinning broadly, he ushers us into the restaurant, his Bavarian accent making itself subtly heard. We fire off some questions, learning that Freddy first studied to be a chef in Erfurt, the place in Thüringen when it comes to fine dining, before heading to Southern Germany and a stint in the military. He was posted abroad several times before navigating his way back into a kitchen, this time in Passau near the German–Czech–Austrian border. He picked up the Bavarian dialect and got influenced by the renowned international cuisine of the three countries.

It’s quite special to work and cook here at Anno 1700. From chopping 25 kg vegetables for the week to taking out the rubbish… you know, standard chef tasks, bro!

The pandemic caused a shift for Freddy, too. He returned to Bad Tabarz and took over the management of the Anno 1700 from his mum and stepped up to be head chef. For the menu, he assiduously relies on local produce – picking herbs for his dishes from his own garden, just metres behind the restaurant, and sourcing everything else within a small radius. To truly be local, he could simply dish up sausage, namely the Thüringer Bratwurst speciality, but that would be another no-go. Instead, he whips up the local produce into a mix of soul and finger food, injecting it with Arabic and French influences and flavours to create seasonal one-offs. For the 200th anniversary of the birth of the water doctor and herbalist priest Sebastian Kneipp, there’s pastis-pickled local salmon trout on a bed of homegrown lettuce with pea, cucumber, and dill vinaigrette, with a glass of local Riesling from the Bad Sulza winery. Or an oriental bowl with wild herb-infused hummus, fermented beetroot, hemp carrots, pickled cucumbers, and flatbread. Upgrade your dish with homemade falafel on a bed of watercress or locally bred pulled lamb. And for dessert? Sheep’s milk yoghurt with roasted apricots, citrus zest, butter crumble, and pistachios.

The themes in his menu range from ‘hometown love & the Orient’, ‘Barbeque, hemp & beer,’ right through to the ‘Power of Nature.’ Alongside three main courses, there are two starters and two desserts to round off your meal. Choices are straightforward and easy to navigate, which means that Freddy can not only guarantee high quality, but it also gives him the freedom to find balance between work and free time. When he’s not out on his gravel bike, he enjoys playing guitar and restoring motorbikes. With stoner rock on the stereo (check out his top 5 tracks here) and a scent of two-stroke oil, he’ll work on his current project: a fiery red Simson S50 with 50 cc and trailer. How driven is Freddy to make money, we wonder? It’s not a priority, he says, admitting he prefers to indulge in life-affirming interests. As he takes us around Anno and its charming creaky floorboards, it exudes a genuine sense of homeliness, and we’re struck by the thought of how easy it’ll be to while away an evening here with good company, good food, and good wine.

I’d never dish up anything that I wouldn’t be happy eating myself.

Love enters through our stomachs – and so does a sense of community

Our tour ends in the heart of the restaurant – Freddy’s creativity zone, the kitchen. We don’t get much time to admire the stainless steel worktops, kitchen knives, and freshly pickled radishes because there’s a group of 15 coming for dinner tonight and the à la carte menu to be prepared. Cupboards are thrown open hastily and Freddy realises there are a few key ingredients missing: certain herbs, fennel, and salad leaves, that need to be hunted down. Anno 1700 source as much produce as possible locally, and its cooperation with the Bodelschwingh-Hof Mechterstädt e.V., a farm with an association focusing on social welfare through agriculture, reassures Freddy that he’s living up to his strict sustainability principles. He climbs onto the Simson, adjusts his Ray Bans, and pulls the throttle. His shirt flutters casually as he gets it moving. It’s hard to imagine this hipster feeling so at home in front of the cooker as he does with dirty fingernails digging up potatoes. His allotment clearly means a lot to him: potatoes, lettuce, carrots, kohlrabi, strawberries, and regular eggs from his chickens, who he jokingly refers to as colleagues. Sustainability is a given for him, and mainly comes down to common sense in his eyes. “This is where the countryside is a step ahead of the city. If a trendy restaurant in Kreuzberg tells you something about local lettuce plants for € 5, there’d be uproar here in the country.” His eyes glimmer with laughter.

As the trailer bumps along from left to right, we sit on the moped’s small bench and Freddy screams over the wind. In his opinion, the idea of cooking using regional produce is deeply rooted in the countryside and especially in East Germany, and not just because of socialism. When the wall fell, his parents strived to satisfy clients with exotic seafood, and everyone was thrilled at the novelty. This was the big wide world landing in Bad Tabarz. But now Freddy has recaught their attention, hauling guests back into the local scene… Local apple juice from Gierstädt reawakens memories in older guests, while the focus on self-grown vegetables is what draws in a younger crowd. While urban gardening is becoming a megatrend, rural allotments are still as thriving as ever. This access to the richness of the land is one of the elements that attract people like Freddy back to the sticks.

Isn’t it somewhat paradoxical that you’d return to your hometown after travelling the world and set yourself the task of rekindling the population’s love for regional produce? We keep the question in mind as we cut through the lovingly and meticulously laid-out greenhouses and fields of the Bodelschwingh Hof farm. Freddy collects what he needs and we turn around, heading back to the Anno 1700 to get a little lunch and the sun on our heads.

The culinary approach to shaping the future within old walls

“Freddy, what are we actually eating here?” We’re spooning forkfuls of his latest fermented veggie creation, fresh tabouleh salad, delicious baba ghanoush, falafel, and crispy fried Sigara Böregi feta rolls. He’s ‘germanified’ some of the elements on the plate, in a bid to maintain accessibility while still making sure they’re imaginative enough to pique people’s interest and spark dialogue. He wants to make sure that everyone – across all generations – gets swept up in his inspired creations. For any slightly apprehensive grandparents, he includes a familiar-sounding dish to tone down the exoticism – how does beef goulash with green beans and Thuringian dumplings sound? Nice strategy, even nicer tasting. You’ll even find the local sweet delicacy of Blechkuchen on the menu each afternoon – done in Freddy’s way, of course, but isn’t that what contemporary fusion cuisine is all about?

While you want to appeal to the grandkids, you’ve still got to make sure that the grandparents are satisfied.

“This is tavern-style home cooking meets Turkish börek with three sorts of carrots, fancy vegan dips, and herbal remedies,” laughs Freddy. “Michelin judges might question the style, but that’s the style, end of. We live on the knife edge. All-in for the contrasts.” When it comes to food, people tend to shy away from experimenting, perhaps because they’ve been disappointed in the past. But this is where Freddy shines, throwing all his creativity, skills, and love for the produce into the mixer. Whatever he puts on the plate is meant to excite you. Here in the countryside, word spreads fast – especially when it’s positive, and even though some thought it was unconventional at first.

Speaking of unconventional, Freddy left the city behind and took over the restaurant in the middle of a global pandemic. During the first lockdown, he decided that the town needed an injection of culture and that it should, of course, go hand in hand with food. He called a couple of cool bands, and put together some good food and drink, reasoning that people were due some better memories of 2020. Last summer this attracted more people than ever to Bad Tabarz – descending from neighbouring cities like Eisenach, Erfurt, Weimar, and Jena to take up residence at Anno 1700. As a region, the mood is incredibly accepting to those who want to move out of the city and into their countryside. For people like Freddy, a move that gives him space to live out his passion makes complete sense. The only thing that’s often missing from places where properties are still affordable and there’s ample space to roam are people – people with big ideas.

Bad Tabarz is only a small fleck on the globe, but you can make a difference when you live in a town of 4,000 residents. That’s what Freddy wants to do – even if the infrastructure has its drawbacks, He sums it up best: “The people are real here. They’re not constantly checking to see whether they’re on point with an ideal of how they should be living. Alongside the proximity to nature, I also really appreciate the realness. What’s missing unfortunately are other decent restaurants that care about creating a gastro scene with appeal for the younger generation, but we’re working on changing that right now. That’s where I’m headed.”

After the day at Anno 1700 with Freddy, we realise our conversation touched upon so much more than just food. Everything from the need to escape the city, sustainability, finding yourself, and how the concept of what a hip urban life should look like is one you create within yourself. Your destiny, like Freddy’s, could be in the sticks and your own Downtown may be exactly where you are, right now.

Words: Benjamin Topf, Susanne Feddersen Photos: Benjamin Topf