Summer Menu challenge 2025

About the Restaurant Essens

Where Borders Blur and Flavour Finds Its Voice in Moravia

Tucked into the serene architecture of Chateau de Frontière—a restored 19th-century border chateau in South Moravia’s Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape, a UNESCO World Heritage Site—ESSENS is a restaurant of intention, restraint, and natural grace. Far from the noise of city dining, it offers a focused, six-course tasting menu designed to connect guests with the rhythm of the region.

Led by a reverence for Czech terroir, ESSENS sources nearly all its ingredients locally—many grown directly in the castle’s gardens. Whether it’s garden-fresh fennel or fruit from the orchard, every component is selected with a quiet insistence on quality.

The setting is part of the experience: vaulted ceilings, elegant lines, and windows that open to a carefully restored estate. It’s dining shaped by heritage, but driven by a very modern, ingredient-first culinary philosophy.

At ESSENS, the plate reflects the land—and Chef Otto Vašák is its translator.

In January 2025, ESSENS was awarded 16 Gault & Millau points (three toques) — a significant recognition by the guide as a “shining gastronomic star of Moravia,” alongside Chef Vašák receiving the title of “Chef of Tomorrow.”

About the Chef

Otto Vašák — From Apprentice to Architect of Moravian Flavour

When Otto Vašák left Prague’s Michelin kitchens behind, some thought the move to a remote border château might be too bold. But it proved the perfect stage for a chef ready to build his own language. Trained by Czech culinary titans like Oldřich Sahajdák (La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise) and Riccardo Lucque, Vašák carries the discipline of fine dining, yet reshapes it with humility and inventiveness.

At ESSENS, he is not just a chef—he is a grower, a curator, and a conductor of local flavor. His work is inspired by the gardens that surround him and the producers he seeks out across South Moravia. His tasting menus are not decorated with complexity—they are carved down to essentials, expressed in bold, often unexpected ways.

Think: potato ice cream, smoked sawdust, or elderflower beef—dishes that feel both grounded and experimental, nostalgic yet new. Otto’s cuisine does not shout. It invites—with warmth, subtlety, and unmistakable character.

He once said:

“Our job is not to impress with excess, but to find the purest expression of an ingredient—and let it speak.”

Chef’s Summer Menu Inspiration

“In the summer months, we draw deeply from nature. Our menu evolves with the season, guided by our harvest and the finest ingredients from trusted local farmers.”

Chef Vašák’s challenge menu is a love letter to South Moravia’s summer—from the sharp green notes of tarragon and chives to the floral sweetness of rhubarb and elderflower. Each of the six courses is paired with wines chosen for expression and elegance, including local Czech Riesling VOC from Sonberk, a Pinot Blanc by Charvát, and an Austrian Sauvignon Blanc from Tement.

Highlights include a lamb with cabbage and nduja, delivering smoky depth, and a cauliflower with chili and chives that balances creaminess with heat. The finale—Rhubarb, White Chocolate, and Lovage—feels like a summer afternoon crystallized into a single bite.

Each dish is shaped not only by creativity, but by discipline, provenance, and heart.