Simon Tress and his brothers: The soup kings and their star cuisine

Maybe four by two meters under glass, here in Hayingen-Ehestetten, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Baden-Württemberg. It’s raining right now, fresh country air is blowing across the yard and through the open door into the greenhouse. Inside, Tress grabs some olive herb for the visitor and rubs it between her hands. “The smell is just really cool, here, smell it,” he says – and a light olive scent emerges.

But Tress can be enthusiastic about anything anyway. There, the lemonade tree is really good, he thinks lemongrass is “weird,” and the chilies are “very cool anyway,” he says. In the summer, he sometimes serves the guests of his restaurant here in the greenhouse the first course, hidden in a wooden box. “Everyone looks at the herbs and then: bam, first course. That’s just cool,” says the 41-year-old.

The village outside the door is officially a climatic health resort: Hayingen, barely 3,000 inhabitants, the Ehestetten district less than 500; the next larger cities Ulm and Stuttgart are just under an hour away. There is a small church tower, a cemetery and then the farm of Tress and his family: with the small Hotel Rose, in which there is an organic restaurant, hidden behind it is another restaurant that dates back to 1950, a barn, a tractor and this same greenhouse. Complete.

The fact that Simon Tress is standing here today is quite remarkable. Because Tress could cook all over the world: Berlin, New York, Singapore. After all, he was once an aspiring gastro star: German culinary ambassador, team captain of the youth national chef team, winner of various awards. He cooked for the then Defense Minister Peter Struck, for Gerhard Schröder and Iron Maiden and was on his way to the very, very top. But instead of kitchen parties backstage at Paris fashion shows, there is now lemongrass harvesting in Ehestetten. And this return was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.