New Kitchen Manager with Worldwide Experience
We are very happy to introduce you to Stephan Mattersberger, the new kitchen manager at AMADEUS Vienna. Before he found his way to AMADEUS in October, he traveled the world’s oceans and cooked at cruise ships, hospitals, hotels, and award-winning restaurants!
In his 30-years career, Mr Mattersberger has explored many different food cultures. He happily shares his stories from when he had his own restaurants in Berlin and in Paris, and when he worked in Tahiti and in Lesotho in South Africa. Nevertheless, he loves the Austrian kitchen and has spent several years adding his personal touch to the traditional dishes such as Tafelspitz and Marillenknödel. For example, he had a leading position at the Viennese 4-star hotel, Arcotel, as well as his own restaurant in Vienna’s 22nd district where he taught asylum seekers how to cook with regional ingredients, herbs, and vegetables fresh from the restaurant’s own little garden.
Last summer (2019), he prepared meals for several Viennese summer camps, and the joy of cooking for children again made him apply for the position of kitchen manager at AV. Furthermore, he enjoys that he can still be inspired by the international cuisine right here at AV, as his seven colleagues are from Austria, Brazil, Spain, Hungary, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A fresh, balanced, and organic weekly menu
Most parents would agree that it takes some creativity to come up with a 3-course meal every single day. Now, imagine that you have to do it for 300 people aged between 3 and 65 who come from very diverse food cultures! We have asked Mr Mattersberger how the team manages this task:
“We always try to make diverse meals so the students get all their vitamins and proteins. At the same time we do our best to accomodate that children, teenagers and adults have different food preferences and that we are cooking for an international community, for example by offering various main courses.”
He further explains that they always use fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains; fat-free or low-fat dairy products; and guarantee a high quality of lean meat, poultry, fish, legumes, and eggs. That said, there is still room for delicious desserts!
Moreover, he proudly shares that many of the ingredients come from local shops:
“We get our daily meat fresh from the butcher, Fleischerei Metzker – this is definitely not a luxury you would have in many other schools. Our fruits and vegetables are also delivered by the local organic farm, Burkhart.”
Besides being busy cooking for every school-day, the kitchen team also meets our boarding students weekly for a Sunday brunch to add their food preferences to the future list of meals. The input from students is highly valued and the students have a lot of good ideas.
The kitchen is kept busy cooking for our boarders during the current lockdown, but they look forward to having all of the students back in the cafeteria and have already put several COVID-19 measures into place to maintain distance and improve hygiene.
Thank you to our kitchen team for cooking for us every day – and Mahlzeit!
Example of weekly menu at AV (click to open)