The Lakeside Poetry of Fish

(Water) Delivery routes couldn’t be any shorter. What Benjamin Mayr catches in the Traunsee at dawn, he boats through a narrow, short access channel directly to the Restaurant Bootshaus soon after. Lukas Nagl, one of Austria’s best chefs, works there on the lakeshore. Nagl always takes the entire daily catch from commercial fisherman Mayr and his colleagues, including small fish, the seemingly irrelevant by-catch. For Lukas Nagl, this is a given, although he is an exception among chefs. On Zanzibar, where he once worked, he observed how the fishermen tied everything they pulled out of the sea to a stick and auctioned it off. “I knew I wanted to do the same in Austria.”

The importance of the element of water for the Restaurant Bootshaus in the Seehotel Das Traunsee is almost impossible for guests to overlook, simply due to its location. The dark expanse of this lake, the deepest in the country, is in view through panoramic windows and from the terrace. In the evening twilight, the last boats are gliding towards the shore while water birds are making their quiet rounds, and many a late swimmer can be seen seeking to cool off in the shimmering black of the lake after enjoying the spa one floor below. The mighty Traunstein looms to the right, and depending on the weather, its peak is sometimes immersed in mist or glowing in all its splendor in shades of pink. Sometimes the little town of Gmunden can be seen on the opposite shore of the lake, other times the view ends somewhere in the reflecting surface that bursts in wet rage during storms.

Only three Austrian lakes are larger than the Traunsee, its water quality is high, as is the variety of aquatic creatures. These go by names such as eel-rod (whose fatty liver is just as much a delicacy as foie gras), bream, reedling, rudd or pearlfish. “We usually get between five and ten different fish. But sometimes it is 25 or 30 species.” Multiplied by Lukas Nagl’s extraordinary creativity, this variety results in the most exciting fish cuisine in the country—by far.

Old knowledge, new techniques – that’s how this chef, who has remained modest, curious and down-to-earth despite his success, sums up his approach. Furthermore, Nagl has a perspective on ingredients that is quite rare in its poetic originality, even by international standards. He sees shapes that are only created through certain cuts or the use of heat. Pike fillet, for example, which he cuts in such a way that it contracts into flowers in hot water. He is inspired by the consistency of ingredients, creating unexpected uses for them. Thus, he sees a milky oyster in a creamed hay milk, and even understands the culinary potential of unpopular sea dwellers. He tackles the triangular mussel, an invasive species once introduced by motorboat, by giving it a tasteful makeover as an ingredient in a delicious saffron broth. Last but not least, he is a master of applying preparation methods from the Far East to local sweetwater creatures.

Lukas Nagl spent several months in Japan, where he learned that sashimi is not just raw fish, but that the fish undergoes quite a bit of pre-treatment. He calls his interpretation “Seeshimi”, which includes whitefish and char, which can now be caught again after a five-year conservation period in Lake Traunsee. In Japan, Nagl explored the nature of koji spores, which are used for miso or seasoning sauces, among other things, as well as the production of katsuobushi: what is originally dried and smoked bonito used as the basis for dashi broths, he transforms into an Austrian version using carp and the smoking chamber in the restaurant.

Taking the entire haul from the fishermen and processing the individual fish from head to tail fin entails a lot of manual work for Nagl’s team. Not only do parts such as the innards have to be separated, which are then transformed into pike tripe, perch bottarga and carp roe mayonnaise, the by-catch and carcasses also have to be processed. An important pillar in the various businesses run by the Gröller family (including the Bootshaus, the Beletage restaurant, which opened in 2024, and the pub Poststube 1327) is Traunsee garum. Many dishes are seasoned with this fermented fish sauce with its complex and elegant flavor. Moreover, you can also buy the freshwater garum, which is marketed by Luvi Fermente, a company co-founded by Lukas Nagl.

The element of water is not only of key importance for the lakeland Salzkammergut due to fishing and bathing tourism. The economic rise of this region is closely linked to salt mining; the salt is extracted from the rocks with the help of water. Lukas Nagl is constantly thinking about water when cooking. He is aware of the effects that water hardness can have on taste, not least thanks to his trips to Japan. “The fact that dashi always tastes so silky in Japan is also dependent on the ingredients, but above all on the water hardness.” Incidentally, water filters are used in the Gröller family’s businesses on Lake Traunsee, as is a lake water heat pump for heating.

According to Nagl, a successful menu must have a certain proportion of water in relation to solids so that it is digestible, retains a certain lightness and does not become too strenuous over the hours. Lukas Nagl avoids sauces that are so concentrated that you can no longer taste what they actually consist of due to their reduced density. He also likes to focus on vegetable water, since “What could be better than a slice of toasted bread with a little garlic dipped in tomato water?” He dehydrates zucchinis, meaning he removes the less aromatic water from the vegetables, and rehydrates them with crayfish dashi, which yields significantly more umami. Using smoked zander heads and pieces of rye bread from the hotel breakfast, Nagl prepares a kind of tea, an extract. “It tastes incredibly good, somehow like Austria, and somehow not at all”.