Places

Osteria TRE

Kantonsstrasse 3, Bubendorf

• www.badbubendorf.ch 
• t +41 61 935 55 55

Basel lacks a precise traditional cuisine, so its chefs had to take a peek outside to launch fine dining in the city. Visitors in Basel may find white tablecloths and candles, dishes that bring together tradition and experimentation through aromatic foods and spices. Basel’s new culinary success is thanks to Flavio Fermi, Chef at Osteria TRE, a starred restaurant inside the Bad Budendorf Hotel. In 2015, the prestigious Gault Millau guide said about him “He was successful in constantly reinventing his cuisine with knowledge and a masterful hand. He’s becoming more and more a master in his own art.”
Flavio was “flattered” by those words, but he clarifies “I was not only reinventing my style, it was more like exploring a completely new region. At the beginning I had French roots and many Mediterranean influences, Asian as well. But at Osteria TRE I decided to focus on traditional cuisine.”
Right now he’s “Obsessed with agnolotti del plin” (a typical stuffed homemade pasta from Piedmont), served at Osteria TRE according to its original recipe “Our guests just love it”, he says. In the end, the philosophy behind a dish like this is to avoid unnecessary waste, all the meat leftovers available for the day end up in it, so the recipe changes a little bit every time.
Fermi started off very young, “I was barely in my mid-teens”, then adds: “To become a master needs a lot of effort, talent, ambition and passion maybe some favourable teachers, later on room for creativity and own experiences become important parts.” But now he knows this is the right job for him, the one that satisfies him completely. He has some advice for beginners that want to become starred chefs, they just need one thing “An iron will.”