The à la carte service is discontinued, but it will be a gentle slip for the two passionate restaurateurs. Because catering, wine and cheese seminars and culinary trips will continue to be offered. Ingrid and Gottfried Bachler met each other at school. Both attended the commercial academy in Feldkirchen and for Gottfried Bachler it was love at first sight, said Ingrid Bachler: “He said on the second day that I’m going to marry you. I just looked at him at the time and said leave me alone. But: Good things take time. He was such an anti-sportsman and I was sporty, so I was more with sporty people.”
For him it was love at first sight
After high school, they parted ways. Gottfried Bachler went to Vienna, Ingrid Bachler stayed in Carinthia. But the contact never broke off completely and at some point Ingrid thought to herself: “Actually he’s a great guy. He was always good for surprises. It was the same when we started our own business together.”
Because one day Gottfried Bachler said he had an idea: “A hotel was advertised for lease on the Hochrindl. I applied and apparently they mightn’t find anyone else because four days before the opening they came to me to negotiate. Then I said I have to go to my girlfriend’s first and ask her if she’d come along.”
After a short discussion, the two decided to venture into self-employment and opened the hotel and restaurant, although neither of them had any prior gastronomic experience. That was in May 1979, they leased the business for four years. After that, the wine academic and the award-winning chef moved on.
From the terrible villa to the gourmet restaurant
In Althofen they wanted to visit an aunt. On the way there they passed an old house. “The house looked terrible and was also called Villa Terrible locally,” says Ingrid Bachler. Six months later it was up for sale and the two of them bought the first money they had earned, renovated the villa and opened their restaurant – the first step towards their cooking philosophy, Gottfried Bachler said: “We were laughed at because we always wanted to know where the products come from. We have always known all the farmers. At the beginning we took pictures of the farmers and their stables with a photographer and hung up the photos so that you can see what the producers look like and what it is like there. But nobody was interested in that at first.”
Gottfried Bachler is an autodidact award-winning chef who, innocently, threw himself into the adventure of gastronomy. Because, as he says, he fulfills the most important requirement for this, he likes to eat: “The desire arose to lend a hand. When we were in Althofen, our three daughters were born. Ingrid was with the children a lot and I was in service. When the children were older, Ingrid took over the service and I went into the kitchen and planned the handover with the chef at the time and then it started.”
Autodidact in the kitchen
Gottfried Bachler copied a lot, he learned a lot by blood. He refused cooking classes and developed his own recipes with the help of his wife. The product on the plate is the “star”, as he puts it. He can do without ornaments and borders. Three components on the plate have to fit together and complement each other, and Gottfried Bachler took this tip from a chef to heart: “One thing led to another and we now have 600 recipes in our stock that we then tried out with people at the cooking schools. A colleague once said why are you giving away your recipes. Then I said, these are yesterday’s recipes, we’re currently developing tomorrow’s.”
As a toque chef, Gottfried Bachler tries everything that tastes good. His wife Ingrid trained as a qualified sommelier and is one of two wine graduates in Carinthia. She is also the founder and chairwoman of the Central Carinthian market place, to which 57 regional companies belong: “We complement each other very well because we try and taste everything. And sometimes I say it’s not possible. That connects us, we always communicate with each other and don’t always agree. But in the end it suits the guest.”
Slow Food for 30 years
She is proud that she has always stayed with her line. The Slow Food story was also a special experience for her: “We’ve been number one and two at Slow Food Austria since 1989 because we got our first TV report regarding Slow Food by chance.” You live in the middle of paradise with one enormous abundance of products, according to Gottfried Bachler, who is now also chairman of the Slow Food Association.
Although the passion for good taste has not died out, the decision was made to invest more in private life in the future. Hiking and traveling is high on her list. They also want to spend more time with their two grandchildren in the future. They will close their gourmet restaurant Bachler in Althofen in a few days, but the two are still available for culinary projects and travel: “It will be a gentle retreat and we’ll see how we’re doing.”