Daniel Gottschlich is the owner and head chef of two successful Cologne restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Ox&Klee, receiving his first star in 2015 and the second in 2019. He has defined a restaurant concept called “Experience Taste“, revolving around the six basic tastes of sweet, sour, umami, salty, bitter and fat, and how they are perceived by all the five senses. Thanks to his experience, passion and culinary skills, he is able to use various ingredients to bring all these tastes to the plate, at top gourmet level and across 15 courses. External sensory stimuli in the form of aromas and sounds also play their part in “Experience Taste”.

With this innovative concept, Daniel is setting new standards in top-level gastronomy, and has gained a Germany-wide reputation as a taste guru. Daniel has demonstrated his skills in the Quarks & Co. taste workshop (a TV programme produced by the German broadcaster WDR), where he was able to correctly identify several different types of salt, and in the SCHMECK tasting project, part of the “Long Night of the Sciences”, organised by Nina Langen and her team. He was also involved (as chef and musician) in the premiere of Hors d‘oeuvre, a musical work by the Slovenian composer Vito Žuraj, performed by the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne. The theme of this composition is the creation of a tonal language for a chef’s various kitchen rituals – including the sharpening of knives, the chopping of parsley and the sizzling of pork cheeks. In 2021, he competed in the popular cooking show "Kitchen Impossible", where he won his contest against TV chef Tim Mälzer. In November 2022, Daniel was a guest judge on "The Taste!" TV programme, broadcast by Sat.1. Since 2022, Daniel Gottschlich has been a member of the jury at the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy, and will be mentoring Team Germany at the finals of the international competition in Milan.