Thomas Buhner.
Thomas Buhner.
Thomas Buhner was born in 1962 in a small village in Riesenbeck, Germany. His father was a commercial clerk, and his mother was a homemaker. “Good cooking didn’t play a big role in our family.
We never went to restaurants, for example,” he says. “But eating together at the table was obligatory.” After a young Buhner took a test at the employment office at the end of school “because I didn’t know what I could become,” he scored the most points for a career in the kitchen. “A short time later, I told my parents that I wanted to be an outstanding chef.”
The young chef trained to cook at the Schweizer Haus in Paderborn, and steadily worked at celebrated kitchens, including the Düsseldorf Hilton under Günter Scherrer, the Landhaus Scherrer in Hamburg, the Grand Cru Restaurant in Lippstadt, the Restaurant Jörg Müller and at Harald Wohlfahrt’s Schwarzwaldstube. At Schwarzwaldstube, Thomas learned the importance of discipline and became intrigued by the down-to-earth attitude and humaneness that Chef Wohlfahrt showed towards the people who worked for him.
In 1991, Thomas Buhner became the head chef at La Table in Dortmund. The restaurant received its first Michelin star five years later and a second one in 1998. In 2001, Thomas Buhner was awarded the Gault Millau Rising Star of the Year award and was voted Chef of the Year five years later. Between 2006 and 2018, chef Thomas helmed La Vie in Osnabruck, a restaurant awarded 19 Gault Millau points and, in 2011, was awarded a third Michelin star. In 2009, he received the accolade of becoming a Relais & Chateaux Grand Chef, while La Vie was granted membership of Les Grandes Tables du Monde at the beginning of 2010.