Bavarian host couple has no menu - now they get an important award for it

Created: 09/22/2022, 12:43 p.m

By: Josef Hornsteiner

Cooking is his passion: Thomas Zwink in his inn's kitchen.

© Oliver Bodmer

Brigitte and Thomas Zwink are awarded "Host of the Year" with their Unterammergauer Dorfwirt.

Extraordinary: There is no menu in the restaurant.

Unterammergau

– The Unterammergauer Dorfwirt is exceptional, just like its two operators, Brigitte and Thomas Zwink.

They don't need a menu.

Nor would there be.

“That is our most important concern,” says Zwink.

"Let yourself be surprised."

The couple only asks the guest three short questions: “How many courses should there be?

Any intolerances?

Vegetarian?” Once that's settled, let's get started.

Zwink conjures up a surprise menu.

First class quality, first class preparation, first class service.

The couple leaves nothing to chance.

Restaurant in Unterammergau has no menu: "It's our most important concern"

The Gusto gourmet guide has now recognized this achievement with an award.

Brigitte and Thomas Zwink have been awarded "Host of the Year" with their "Dorfwirt & Friends" in Unterammergau.

In the years since it opened in 2013, there have been many such honors for the couple.

But this is a special one, as Thomas Zwink says.

"A sensation." Because the decisive factor for the price is primarily the fact that the couple only manages the restaurant as a couple: service, kitchen and in between, of course, a nice chat with the guests.

Six tables have the Zwinks to taste.

The Dorfwirt is only open from Thursday to Sunday and on public holidays.

Zwink can still roughly remember the day when Gusto's critic came.

Of course, the couple didn't know it then.

Only when the news came weeks later that they were receiving the award was the invoice from that time available.

"In doing so, they prove that they were here 100 percent." That is no longer very common in the tester industry.

The guests also love the Dorfwirt.

It is the restaurant with the best rating in Unterammergau on the tripadvisor internet platform.

Restaurant without a menu honored with a gourmet award

The Gusto praises the couple to the skies – because they are simply who they are.

"Without any hotel management school perfection, but with lived matter of course, yet in an extremely professional way, Brigitte and Thomas Zwink present their wonderfully individual vision of a place of pleasure," says the Gusto.

The "comfortable and authentic cordiality" can be felt everywhere with self-confident enthusiasm for one's own cause thanks to the "feel-good character of a Bavarian inn".

Guests are spoken to on a first-name basis, as is Bavarian matter of course, but this is “never fake jovial, but simply authentic”.

The couple would confidently pick up and take away the different types of guests.

"In the best moments, there can even be a sense of community, carried by cheerful enjoyment, and a relaxed exchange across the hosts and tables."

Dorfwirt couple voted "Host of the Year" - "Comfortable and authentic cordiality"

It warmed the critic's heart when Thomas Zwink raved about his meadow wool pigs or Brigitte Zwink relaxedly insisted on "just letting them do it".

Each surprise course is accompanied by “exciting individual wines”, writes the Gusto.

So the spark had jumped over.

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By the way: everything from the region is also available in our regular GAP newsletter.

The couple received their first award, a Bib, in 1997. At that time they had opened their first restaurant in the old town of Kempten.

Before that, Thomas Zwink was a gossip reporter for all the world's gazettes for ten years.

In 2013, the native of Oberammergau and his wife moved back to the Ammer Valley.

In addition to the "seven pans" of ten in the Gusto, which he has held for several years in a row, Zwink has received awards in the Gault Millau, Schlemmer Atlas, falstaff and the enjoyment guide.

The Gusto gourmet guide team anonymously tests and rates over 1000 restaurants throughout Germany.

There are awards in six areas and ten top 10 categories.

After the Michelin, it is the most important gourmet award in the Federal Republic.

You can find more current news from the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen at Merkur.de/Garmisch-Partenkirchen.