Hamburg restaurants are at the forefront of sustainability

This are the words from the Michelin Guide, which has awarded more “GREEN STARS“ to restaurants in Hamburg than any other city in Germany. Seven Hamburg restaurants have received this award already, and they are now being awarded for the second time. This is proof that the Hanseatic city not only has first-class and innovative chefs in its restaurants, but also that chefs here are committed to sourcing organic, ecological and fair products, and promoting regionality and seasonality.

Sustainability and conscious consumption are becoming more and more important for the city’s guests too, as many want to know how and where their food and other goods were produced and who produced them. A lot of the time, the chefs get the produce for their restaurants from their immediate surroundings, either through strong professional relationships with local producers, or from their own gardens and greenhouses. It is not uncommon for the produce to come from the city area - after all, Hamburg‘s “vegetable garden“, the Vier- und Marschlande, is only a few kilometres away from the city, and “Das Alte Land“, the largest fruit-growing area in Northern Europe, is just on the other side of the Elbe.

As much as these restaurants agree about providing an environmentally friendly culture, their cuisines are very different. From the organic-certified restaurant like Wolfs Junge, where almost everything is produced in-house and the restaurant runs its own farm, to the traditional Michelin-star restaurant Landhaus Scherrer with its classic northern German cuisine, to 100/200 with its seasonal menus, which are closely aligned with the respective seasons and are sometimes purely vegetarian or foraged and characterised by fire and smoke. It‘s hard to choose a restaurant in Hamburg, because these “green star“ award-winning restaurants are just a few representatives of this great sustainable movement that can be felt everywhere in Hamburg. Whether it‘s a breakfast café, lunch location, day bar, food truck, evening restaurant or bar - countless restaurateurs rely on regional and seasonal products and are committed to protecting the climate, all enabling their guests to enjoy their food with a clear conscience. A glance at the menu usually makes this very clear, because transparency is very important in sustainable gastronomy. “Hamburg’s restaurants are at the forefront of sustainability.“