Hotel Tulipán

The restaurant & setting. We are in Tatranská Lomnica, right below the Lomnický štít peak, where Martin arrives as a mountain lover and proud Slovak at Hotel Tulipán. It is a hotel restaurant with a wellness centre and a stunning view of the saddle and surrounding hills, one of the few things here that work all by themselves. Martin immediately notices the interior feels nothing like the Tatras, more like a chilly patisserie, but he gives it a chance and sits down to taste. The Tatras have tourism and hungry mouths, so it puzzles him that this particular restaurant is the one calling for help.

The people. The owner is Peter Gajdošík, who spent over twenty years in the IT business before taking a radical turn and buying the hotel. In the operation everyone covers for everyone, which is their whole philosophy. The cook is Adrián „Aďo" Lavko, talented but quiet and closed off, while Monika and Diana work reception and service and also pitch into the kitchen, Roman Korenko handles maintenance and the pizza, and Tomáš serves in a t-shirt instead of a shirt. Aďo grew up in a children's home, lost his father when he was one and his mother when he was six, and today lives with his grandmother in Veľký Slavkov.

Why they called Martin. Despite the hotel sitting on a prime Tatra location, the restaurant is empty and the only thing keeping it alive are children from outdoor schools. Peter is carrying a bank loan in the hundreds of thousands of euros, energy and credit are running out for everyone, and he himself says they have a few weeks at most to save the place. „I think that if it doesn't change, we might even close the hotel after summer," is the word from the staff.

The first visit. Martin orders across the whole menu and is struck right away by the prep time, twenty to forty-five minutes even for a starter. The homemade tripe soup is thickened with flour but tasty, the bryndza halušky are lukewarm on a cold plate and short on bryndza, while the confit duck with dumpling and cabbage is the best dish of the day and the schnitzel is excellent, „like grandma's". But with the bandit's pocket Martin pulls out photos of the same dish his scouts had been served here before, and the comparison is a disaster: he now has a nice portion, whereas the guests then got cold convenience food. The pizza is utter nonsense under the Tatras for him, badly baked and flavourless. „I feel so deceived," he concludes, because today's dishes are wildly different from what ordinary guests receive.

The diagnosis. Martin puts the kitchen under the microscope and finds the root cause: four people were on shift at once because of him, to make an impression, while normally just about anyone cooks here. At first they lie that the food and the photos are standard, but Martin calls in his colleague Zuzka, who recently ate a tough, watery stuffed pocket here, and confronts Peter with the facts. Peter finally admits the photos were dressed up and that he wanted to make a good impression. „Why is your restaurant failing if you make good food?" Martin asks, and demands that from tomorrow everyone does the job they were hired for, and that Tomáš comes in a shirt.

The reset. To open Aďo up, Martin takes him into a private forest to gather spruce shoots, where the cook finally smiles and talks about his hard childhood. Together they layer the shoots in sugar to make a syrup full of vitamin C, the first thing nobody else around here has. Meanwhile Martin's team brings new equipment into the kitchen, and Peter gets a rented carousel and a candy-floss cart for the children. To give the kitchen a head at last, Martin brings in experienced head chef Tomáš Tejbus, who promises to come and help for one month.

New concept & menu. Martin and the team make the restaurant cosy in a Tatra spirit, wooden pictures of real Tatra peaks appear on the walls, and the staff are left speechless. He also prepares a fresh yet traditional menu he has seen nowhere nearby: pickled sheep's cheese with onion marmalade, a mushroom toast with egg, veal perkelt with homemade dumplings, lamb shank with carrot and bean ragout, grilled zander, posúch flatbread, and desserts like šúľance with jam or a tartlet with blueberries. He adds spruce-shoot specialities too: brandy, syrup and jam.

The big night. The live service starts chaotically, the restaurant is untouched and the spoons unpolished, Marcel walks out for a cigarette mid-prep without a word and Martin has to bring him back to the kitchen. The silence and zero emotion in the kitchen wear Martin down, but Tomáš pushes the pace and the team gradually finds its rhythm. The guests leave happy, the children eat everything, and Aďo is proud of himself for the first time. Martin says goodbye knowing they can handle the kitchen without him now, and promises to come back for a merciless inspection.

One month later. Martin returns at the start of the summer season and sees people sitting in the restaurant. Peter admits it exceeded his expectations, they managed to hire about fifteen to seventeen seasonal workers, Tomáš proved to be an expert, and a new convection oven and holding cabinet have joined the kitchen. The dishes are nicely plated and taste good, the potato cream, the mushroom toast and the apricot šúľance please Martin, but two things remain: the prep time still runs twenty to forty-five minutes, and the šúľance are this time far too greasy.

Verdict: Martin awards 3 knives, saying they have a superb location and it is up to them to make use of it, a reward for what they managed in a month and a half, but with a clear message that they still have to work on service speed and on the details.