Who

Gutenbrunner is Manhattan's wurst chef—he's the city's foremost specialist in German and Austrian eats. He owns the restaurants Wallsé, Café Sabarsky, and Blaue Gans.

Backstory

The Austria native cut his teeth at various Michelin-starred restaurants in Switzerland and Vienna before heading to the U.S. in 1988, putting in time at Windows on the World before moving to Bouley, where he worked as sous chef. Gutenbrunner took a six-year sojourn to Munich in 1990, returning stateside in 1996 after accepting a job as culinary director of his old boss David Bouley's expanding restaurant empire. In 1997, he became the executive chef at Peter Glazier's Monkey Bar, but before long Bouley came knocking again and asked Gutenbrunner to helm Danube, his then-pending Austrian gastropalace in Tribeca. Gutenbruner initially agreed, but grew exasperated with Danube's construction delays, and in 2000 he struck out on his own, opening Wallsé (named after his hometown in Austria) in the West Village. With the restaurant's walls covered with artwork by Julian Schnabel (including a portrait of Gutenbrunner himself), Wallsé earned high acclaim and led to a handful of other Gutenbrunner ventures in recent years.

Of note

After Wallsé proved a hit, cosmetics heir Ron Lauder invited Gutenbrunner to open a spot in his posh Teutonic art museum on the Upper East Side, the Neue Gallerie. The result, the Annabelle Selldorf-designed Café Sabarsky, opened in 2001. Four years later, Gutenbrunner opened the restaurant Thor in The Hotel on Rivington on the Lower East Side; in something of a departure for him, Gutenbrunner served up continental fare at the spot, rather than the Austrian dishes for which he's known. Gutenbrunner walked away from Thor in 2006—a dispute with the hotel's management allegedly prompted the split—but these days, in addition to Wallsé and Blaue Gans, he also presides over the Tribeca bistro Blaue Gans, in the space formerly occupied by David Waltuck's Le Zinc.

Personal

Gutenbrunner has a son and three daughters (including a set of twins) with his wife Yasmin. He lives in Tribeca, not far from Blaue Gans.