HISTORY

The history behind LÈ208

Wood and smoke are our most powerful tools. - only natural heat, soot, ash, smoke, and fire.

A warm welcome to Restaurant LÈ208

I grew up in Germany, a little village called Zescha in the far east.

Like most young people, my attitude to where I came from was to turn my back on it.

When I trained as a chef, usage of local ingredients wasn’t always at the forefront of our training instead fell in love with Italian olive oil and French cooking .

When I worked in my first michelin restaurant at the age of 20, the focus was on luxury ingredients and high end gastronomy, serving dishes such as Caviar, truffle, foie gras.

It couldn’t have been further away from the rustic slow cooking of the the villages we all came from.

More and more i felt the urge to return to my roots.

I been roaming around in china for a while , constantly falling in love with all the different landscapes China has to offer.

It was only later that I realised I hadn’t been able to see the wood for the trees. Quite literally!

When I met my business partner, Mr. Bai , introducing me to this beautiful little village near Shanghai called Dongshe, I realized now or never.

Here fire is still part of everyones home,

as chef we mostly cooked on a grill, but one day we couldn’t wait for the embers, so we pushed a cast iron pan into the flames.

The fire hissed and crackled around the pan. What power, and what flavour!

Finally, we felt we been onto something.

The idea of a new kind of fine-dining restaurant began to take shape in our mind, with my friend and chef Junto, a place where everything was cooked over a fire, just like in the old days.

and our neighbor has been truly inspiring us because all of them till date using Wood to cook their meals every day.

LÈ 208 opened in 2024 in Shanghai, with a fire pit, a wood fired oven and a wood stove.

Plenty of people said I’d made things too difficult for myself.

But since then I’ve continued to make things more and more challenging for myself and my team. Because that’s what brings us joy, we will continue to explore age-old techniques and to learn more about a lost art of cooking.

CHEF MAIK