If a bratwurst or a neck steak is all you want to eat at a barbecue, you don’t need to read any further than this. After all, Marcus Schuster is about much, much more. The trained restaurant specialist and chef, who learned his trade in Michelin-starred restaurants in Munich, London and Portugal, has expanded classic barbecuing and open-air catering to include unusual recipes. He has also placed various barbecues and a smoker on the grounds of the BILSTER BERG. He prepares venison burgers or pulled pork with fire, smoke and a lot of patience. “Customers and visitors come to the BERG for sophisticated events and motor sports. We want to offer catering that is also high-quality, but can also be offered directly on site, for example in the pits or in the paddock.” Schuster is interested in an alternative to the classic buffet (which usually just sits there for hours, is being kept warm and thus does not look fresh anymore). “But we also didn’t want to just set up a bratwurst truck, like the ones you can see at every Easter bonfire,” says the restaurateur. The creative chef, who has been running the restaurant at the BILSTER BERG as well as the restaurant at the open-air museum in Detmold for six years, had to come up with something new. And the result was a cube-shaped portable box – the White Cube, which was specially made for Marcus Schuster and placed at the BILSTER BERG. “There was nothing like that before,” says Schuster proudly, “even though there’s a lot of hype around food trucks.”

The food cube is equipped with stainless steel and refrigerators on the inside. On the outside, it is plain white, so customers can individually brand it for their events. There are also six different barbecue areas on the premises. Schuster’s pride and joy is the smoker or the large ring grill with the round stainless steel plate and the fireplace in the middle. He only uses meat from his own breed, either beef from the BILSTER BERG or lamb from his pasture at the Detmold open-air museum. “You can’t be more organic than that,” says Schuster. “Our big goal is to cook fresh, regional and seasonal food. Of course, the experienced chef can also do something completely different than smocking: when Ferrari is on the BERG for several days – as was the case recently – he serves up short roasts and fish dishes à la minute in the restaurant TURN ONE. When the national cycling league takes place at the BILSTER BERG in late summer, he and his team will cater for up to 4,500 people. “With something this big, we naturally get partners on board,” explains the restaurateur. “We want to create quality, after all.” It is important to Schuster that everything is a little different from what you get elsewhere. That is his passion. The same goes for his team: “Sometimes they really start tinkering, trying things out and making improvements,” says Schuster. Nevertheless, the new guy on the BERG doesn’t want to turn everything upside down: “We just want to move forward.” And that’s what everyone wants at the BILSTER BERG.