You may be wondering why this is such a big deal to me. Well, if you’ve ever tried to get tickets to an event and refreshed the website multiple times until the portal opened – this is basically how a reservation happens at the restaurant ‘Oben’.
They only have 12 seats per night and are only open 4 nights a week. Before changing their booking system a while ago, they were fully booked for over a year (back then I was not able to get a table for my birthday a year in advance). This escalated even further after them being featured on a TV show (‘Am Pass’, Season 1 Episode 6). They also established WhatsApp groups where they post cancellations so they can re-assign the tables. They have 6 groups with 900+ members each. Once a table is posted, it’s gone within 1-2 seconds. I’m not kidding. They actually have to post screenshots to prove who replied first. It’s crazy.
Anyway – after switching to their new reservation system, they now open up the reservations for a particular month 6 months in advance. On the first of the month, at midnight. The first time I tried this, I failed miserably. I went onto the site 1-2 minutes after midnight and everything was booked. The next time, I made sure to be on the site at midnight. However, by the time I had clicked on a date and time, the weekends were booked. And by the time I had decided on an alternative weekday, the rest was booked. Considering that I wanted to reserve for a special occasion (and that I’m usually not up at midnight on a week day) I stopped trying for a while. But I set an alarm in my calendar so I could try again to reserve a table for the weekend after my birthday.
So, on the night of Monday, 30th June 2025, I was waiting for the reservations to go live at midnight. I made sure I knew exactly which date I wanted and where on the screen I would need to click. Long story short: I got the reservation! I couldn’t believe it.
Maybe now you understand the headline and why I was so excited for this evening. The excitement for a dinner at ‘Oben’ starts long before the actual meal.
But enough about my foodie-nerdiness. Let’s dive into my experience at Oben:
The drive there already sets the tone for the evening. You leave Heidelberg and head up toward the Koenigstuhl. We had booked a room at the mountain inn nearby so we wouldn’t have to drive far after dinner. From there, you have an impressive view over Heidelberg. When we made our way to the restaurant around 6:15 p.m., it was already dark, with light wisps of fog drifting through the forest.
Arriving at the Kohlhof grounds, we took a moment to look around before entering the courtyard of Oben. A beautiful old tree is situated in the middle of the courtyard, and the well-preserved buildings, objects, and old signs make you want to explore the history of this place.
Before we even reached the door, Leis Buettner — host and sommelier — welcomed us and took our coats. Inside, the dining room delivers exactly what is promised: a living-room atmosphere. Chalk drawings on the walls add a personal touch, with just the right dose of humor.
Once seated, even the chairs — a mix between a chair and a rocking chair — add to the cozy, homely feel. The music is perfectly chosen: modern, not too loud, not too quiet, just the right mood. At one point during the evening, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons would play in between pop songs — sure to conjure up Chef’s Table visuals for any foodie with a Netflix account.
The menu was already laid out on the table — personalized with our names. A lovely gesture. For the aperitif, Leis offered a choice of four different sparkling wines: white, rosé, and an alcohol-free option. We chose the two rosé variations. And just like that, the evening began.
The first part of the “prologue” was a carrot soup and a piece of carrot in chamomile caramel. If you’re thinking, “Yea…nice enough way to start”—think again. The soup was an absolute flavor bomb and one of our highlights of the entire menu. What a way to start the evening. Alongside it came a small “cornetto” filled with eel and beef tartare, topped with pickled elderflower. One bite is enough to forget any prejudice you might have against eel.
The intimate, homely atmosphere at Oben is further enhanced by the fact that Robert Raedel and Loris de Luigi — chef and sous-chef — personally serve and explain the dishes, alternating between courses.
The second part of the prologue featured a ‘mustard egg’: a sous-vide–cooked egg yolk with a creamy herb sauce inspired by the herbs of (Frankfurt-style) green sauce. In the center of the table, a savory macaron half was served with trout tartare from Forellenhof Lenz from the nearby ‘Odenwald’ area.
After the prologue, we chose the beverage pairings — one wine pairing and one non-alcoholic pairing. I had heard many good things about the alcohol-free option, so we decided to try both pairings side by side with the different courses. This was 100% the right choice. The alcohol-free option offers perfectly curated drinks to accompany the different courses. You can really tell that a lot of thought and heart go into this. This way, the alcohol-free option does not feel like the lesser option, but almost like the more exciting option, with a different surprise for each course.
The main menu started with a visual and culinary highlight centered around beetroot. Goat’s cream cheese was paired with beetroot in two ways: once as a beautifully marbled sphere in a spiced broth, and once topped with a beetroot powder and served with fig-and-walnut sourdough bread from Suedseite Bakery in Heidelberg. I already knew this bakery from various articles, and this dish gave us the perfect excuse to pick up two fresh sourdough loaves on our way home the next day.
The next course brought another highlight that is a standard part of the Oben experience: for one course, each table is invited into the kitchen. Drinks in hand, we sat down at a small table in the kitchen. From the counter, you can look straight into the compact workspace and watch Robert and Loris at work. It’s impressive to see that only the two of them produce all these dishes and in a kitchen that’s only about twice the size of a normal home kitchen. Even more impressive is how they still manage to chat with guests at the same time. As a guest, it’s a wonderful experience to talk directly with the chef — it immediately creates a different kind of connection to the restaurant and the team.
The dish we enjoyed in the kitchen was cauliflower, pan-fried in brown butter on a parsley cream, with egg yolk and hazelnut cream.
Back at our table came Robert’s signature dish: Landschweinwedel. Served with Boskoop apple, chives, and horseradish. A dish that utilizes and celebrates a part of the animal that’s often not used in cooking.
Next came a course that appears rather understated on the menu: “Celeriac & Poppy Seeds.” In reality, it’s one of the most memorable courses of the evening. A brown “sphere” and a hammer are placed on a table in the center of the dining room. Shortly after, Robert appears, rings a little bell, and explains the process of baking the celeriac in salt dough, and then slowly begins to crack the sphere open with the hammer. Inside: a steaming celeriac.
Shortly after, a portion of this celeriac is served at the table with a creamy sauce and poppy seeds. Alongside it comes another celeriac-and-poppy-seed interpretation: green celery with a foraged and pickled poppy bud.
The next course, titled “Rhine Fish”, featured pike and zander from the Rhine — shorter supply chains for fish are hard to find in Germany. It was served with braised cucumber. Simply a wonderful dish, and one that even my husband — who doesn’t usually enjoy fish — loved.
The meat course of the menu, fitting the season, was venison. Before turning to the main plate, attention is first drawn to a cracker topped with a small ball of tartare, served on a glowing pine cone set in moss. On the plate itself, alongside perfectly cooked, incredibly tender meat, was a “cabbage roll”—pointed cabbage wrapped in a cabbage leaf. A playful take on the word and on the expectations of what a cabbage roll should be. We honestly couldn’t decide whether the cabbage roll or the meat was the better part of the dish. The real highlight, however, was the sauces—unbelievably intense in flavor. You can only begin to imagine how many hours of work went into them. Fittingly, fresh Buchteln (soft yeast buns) were served alongside, perfect for wiping up every last drop of sauce.
The venison was followed by a slow transition into dessert: pumpkin and nutmeg ice cream with a Darjeeling infusion and candied ginger. Pleasant and only moderately sweet, it was a gentle introduction to the sweet part of the evening.
Next came a play on temperatures and textures: quark cream in a warm pear broth with tapioca pearls, accompanied by a sorbet and a baton of meringue.
To finish, we were served a small but excellent cheesecake medallion with plum jelly and a salted caramel Michelin-man. After that, we had some time to let the evening slowly wind down.
And then came one final little surprise — something that sets Oben apart from other restaurants. You do receive a bill, but payment is made later, from home, via wire transfer. What originally started due to poor internet connection has been kept as a gesture of trust toward the guests. And so you leave the restaurant holding a black envelope, without having paid. Another detail that reinforces the living-room atmosphere and the feeling of being a guest in someone’s home. As we were leaving, the chef personally handed us our coats and said goodbye.
Inside the black envelope, alongside the bill, was a handwritten thank-you note and a sticker of their logo.
Thank you, Robert, Loris, and Leis. From both a culinary and a hosting perspective — absolutely outstanding. Can’t wait to be back!
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