Relais & Châteaux restaurant in Osnabruck with its own chauffeur seervice to pick up guests from the local area, serving exceedingly elaborate food with moments of bliss

To celebrate my Birthday with a very select food-friendly few, the nearest 3 Michelin starred venue to my place of work was one hour down the road in the peaceful hamlet of Osnabruck. Having never been there it was nice to go via the German Deutche Bahn with a bottle of ‘poo’ along the way. The lovely finihs to this was that on arrival at Osnabruck station, a chauffeur was by his car, at the ready to take us to La Vie (I got wind of this on the phone to them and of course seized the option) – a very nice touch by the restaurant. Canapés at the bar were amongst the most intricate and carefully prepared I have ever come across and were beautiful to look at and eat.

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The main thing to say on this tasting menu was that the meal was a 5 hour marathon, and that was fine with us as the price tag was not exactly cheap at €300 per head all in, however for what we received and at the level it was delivered, I was entirely happy. The courses has superb creativity and there was entertainment in them the whole way through; the head chef came and spoke to us at length at the table and his wife looked after us to an unparalleled standard, inviting us to have our drinks taken to the garden for us to have smoking or natural breaks when required. The married couple who own and run La Vie fall in to a lucky bracket as they clearly love their jobs and are at one looking after their guests as if this establishment was their own home. We were made to feel entirely welcome and could not have been catered for in a better way.

My only niggles with this visit were that I was approaching max capacity with the richness and volume of food on the menu, however one of the pre-deserts was quite incredible as having that course actually made me less full as was its purpose, so that was very clever. The other aspect that lowered the overall rating was that I didn’t enjoy the curry paste to go with the fillet steak and the iced flakes of cheese were clever (the cheese course being literally as per thick, ice cream flakes I didn’t think worked as I could not feel like it was a clever twist on cheese, more a very sour and unpalatable ice cream – the mix of sweet and savoury did not go unfortunately. However, overall this meal was spectacular in its design and there were some fine moments from the entirely fresh mackerel and superb liquid-centred doughnuts at the end. Lunch here would be a better option for value for money.

Food Grade: 88%