If he hadn’t become a chef, you might find him on the sidelines of the soccer field today. Then one might not speak of Zettel-Ewald, but of Zettel-Sven. Because Elverfeld is someone who likes to get bogged down. Whenever his mind is on vacation and his thoughts are free, his ideas are bubbling up. Then he pulls out pen and paper, notes ingredients, new combinations and preparation methods. Later they become dishes like works of art. Works of art that no one else makes, that are unmistakably Elverfeld. “Like a painter, whom you can recognize by his pictures,” he says. He can say that. Sven Elverfeld is one of the nine best chefs in Germany, quite a few consider him the best of the best.

Sven Elverfeld is someone who can say he didn’t hear the gong. And with pride. He wanted to be free, not to be held hostage by the time clock, just without a gong that determines when work begins, when breaks take place and when work ends. He, the hothead, is not made for working in a corset. He was looking for passion, wanted to burn for something, burn brightly and of all things ended up at the stove. And that was a good thing. “Regardless of the profession, people are successful who work with passion, enthusiasm and fun. That has nothing to do with cooking at first. An athlete needs passion. An artist needs passion. A carpenter needs passion”, he says. “Without passion there is no perfection.”

What Elverfeld brings to the plate is perfect. At least that’s how the high judges of good taste, the testers of the Michelin Guide, see it. Elverfeld has held three Michelin stars with its Aqua for 14 years. More is not possible. The restaurant in Wolfsburg has been voted the best in the country several times, and he has already been able to call himself the best chef. From the Olympus of chefs, Germany currently has nine three-star restaurants, it is hard to imagine life without him. He is regarded as an avant-gardist in the kitchen, combining simplicity with sophistication, tradition with modernity. He wanted one thing above all: to bake cakes.

He trained as a confectioner because he thought: people always eat. He was 16 then. He then swapped the oven for a stove and completed his cooking training. Later he cooked for Dieter Müller and Dieter Biesler, in Japan and on Crete. Was in Dubai when hardly anyone was in Dubai anymore. “In 1998 there were only three hotels on the beach, otherwise there was nothing but desert,” he recalls. And then came Wolfsburg. Elverfeld has been in the kitchen at the Aqua Chef since 2000, and once helped plan and set it up. He cooked first one, then two stars for the restaurant at “The Ritz Carlton”. “And then one day I get the incredible call: ‘Hello, Mr. Elverfeld, this is the editorial office of the Michelin Guide, my name is Finkenflügel, I can congratulate you on three stars!’ There was radio silence for a moment, in my head and on the phone. I had to sit down first,” he says. That was in 2008.

Elverfeld is a free spirit. Someone who doesn’t want to pretend or change just to please. “I am who I am and I have my quirks. I’m definitely a hothead and pretty straight forward,” he says. If he wanted something, he wanted it right away. “Patience is a foreign word for me. That won’t change anymore.” When it comes to his kitchen, he thinks globally and as limitlessly as possible. If he were to fixate on the regional, that would mean limiting himself to diversity – “and that wouldn’t be me”.

Sven Elverfeld has brought culinary delights to Wolfsburg. He stands for star cuisine in the Autostadt and he is under surveillance. “I can’t move around there completely carefree,” he says. “If I loaded my car with packet soup, they would frown, to put it bluntly.” Privately, Elverfeld is just someone who loves pizza. And when push comes to shove, if he doesn’t feel like cooking at home after a long day, then, yes, there’s even a frozen pizza. He is, he says, “only human”.

Isolde Heinz and Gunnar Meinhardt have written more about Sven Elverfeld and nine other three-star chefs, how they tick and what drives them in the portrait collection “Three stars: More is not possible”. The quotes are taken from the book.

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– Clemens Rambichler: This is how Germany’s youngest three-star chef ticks

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