The chef of the super-rich about luxury restaurants: ‘No one wants to eat these dishes’

The super rich love Ralph Schelling’s food. They fly him to Malibu, Aspen and Capri for dinner parties. Luxury brands such as Yves Saint Laurent book him to cater their parties. And they come to him when a private island in the Caribbean needs a food concept.

The luxury private chef from Zurich is making his dream come true. But that wasn’t always the case. “Now I can choose my job, but before I fought for every job,” says Ralph Schelling in an interview with Watson.

In his apartment in Zurich Wollishofen, he talks about what it’s like for him to feed billionaires and stars around the world with his culinary skills.

Ralph Schelling sits on his white designer sofa, surrounded by enormous cacti, a stuffed wild boar head and a cardboard work of art: his home furnishings are as special as his jet-set job.

But that’s pretty much the only extravagant thing Schelling has taken from his clients. Normally it works exactly the opposite for him: with his cooking skills he brings back a bit of normality to the super rich. «Wherever I go, I try to introduce people to the local, everyday cuisine, so that they get to know their country in a new way. “No frills but with my personal touch,” says Schelling. To do this, he visits the local market with a guide to buy regional products.

In Mexico, for example, he had an order for a villa located on the Costa Careyes, the ‘Turtle Coast’ dominated by the wealthy. “Because the sea was being fished out, we found almost no quality products on the market. Until I discovered simple cacti. We grilled them and made salsa from them. Then there was sorbet made from fresh coconuts with mescal. The customers loved it,” says Schelling. He is often booked because he can take the country’s cuisine to a new level. An Italian grandmother once even had tears in her eyes because she liked his lasagna so much. With a raw vegan lasagna!

«In my kitchen I go back to the origins of food. “Everything with natural essences and without additives,” says Schelling. For events in Switzerland, which account for about half of his orders, he often used products from his own garden and conjured up natural dishes. But the luxury chef actually learned differently.

He got his start in the former Michelin star restaurant “Petermann’s Kunststuben” in Küsnacht on the Gold Coast. Afterwards he always worked in top restaurants, such as the ‘Fat Duck’ near London, the ‘Ryugin’ in Tokyo or ‘El Bulli’ on the Costa Brava, which was considered number 1 in the world for many years. Schelling has learned a lot from chef Ferran Adrià.

But Schelling no longer has much in the way of classic luxury restaurants. «Restaurants with 10-course menus, Dutch cress and gold leaf decorations were informal 15 years ago. But nowadays no one wants to eat these dishes anymore,” says Schelling. He prefers to go to a chef who is at the stove himself and does not have to make everything look perfect. “Food can look natural,” says the private chef. That is his model for success.

Before he cooked for stars like Coldplay or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, it wasn’t easy for him. “When I started almost ten years ago, the assignments were often not enough to make ends meet,” says Schelling. No one was waiting for him then. “In the first few years I often supported myself with temporary jobs,” he says.

After almost three years of struggling, Schelling was finally able to live on his independence. “What helped me most were personal recommendations from satisfied customers,” says Schelling proudly. He takes good care of his clients, many of whom are discreet multi-millionaires and billionaires. “My regular customers are very down-to-earth people who often treat me as part of the family,” he says. It was not unusual for him to go on holiday with them for a few days after an assignment or to spend time with them in some other way. Swiss singer Marius Bear was also on site for an order in Ireland. Schelling then visited the coolest bars in the country with him and his customers.

Intimate details and unusual food requests of the elite cannot be elicited from the private chef during a conversation. «I often have to sign a contract in which I say nothing about my customers. Nothing at all,” Schelling emphasizes. In many cases, communication takes place exclusively via encrypted messaging services. The secrecy, but especially the quality of Ralph Schelling’s work, has a price: several thousand francs. But this is no obstacle for the super-rich to hire the luxury chef: they love Ralph Schelling’s food.