Gault Millau Switzerland has named Dominik Hartmann its Chef of the Year 2027, and for the first time the title goes to a chef who cooks exclusively vegetarian food. Hartmann runs the kitchen at Magdalena in Rickenbach, in the canton of Schwyz, which the guide rated at 18 out of 20 points in the edition announced on Monday.
The award caps a bold change of direction. Hartmann already held two Michelin stars when, in 2022, he rebuilt his cooking entirely around vegetarian menus. He runs Magdalena, which has its own bakery on site, with his friends Marco Appert and Adriana Hartmann. The guide first took notice of the team in 2021, when it named them its Discovery of the Year. Gault Millau director Urs Heller has labelled Hartmann’s style “Vegi 2.0”, and the guide describes the food as “tasty and full of surprises”.
At the very top of the rankings, seven chefs share the maximum score of 19 points. From French-speaking Switzerland come Franck Giovannini in Crissier, Vaud, and Philippe Chevrier in Satigny, Geneva. Basel is represented by Tanja Grandits and Peter Knogl, while Andreas Caminada holds the score in Fürstenau, Graubünden, and Heiko Nieder in Zurich. The Italian-German chef Marco Campanella completes the group for his two La Brezza restaurants in Ascona and Arosa.
Ticino also features among the guide’s honours. Franco Palladino of Enoteca Cuntitt in Castel San Pietro is the Revelation of the Year for the canton, with 17 points. Among the year’s discoveries are Alessia Salvini and Baldo Lopez, whose Ristorante 3 VIE in Motto, in the Blenio Valley, enters with 14 points.
The new edition covers 870 restaurants, 84 of them listed for the first time. Movement within the guide leaned upwards this year: 98 chefs improved their scores and 31 saw them fall. Hartmann’s win arrives as Switzerland’s high-end dining scene keeps expanding, with the number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the country having risen to 145, according to swissinfo.ch.
