About Gusto

The restaurants and country inns recommended in the GUSTO guide are visited by the experienced testers anonymously, without prior consultation, as normal reserving and paying guests. All of our testing employees have in-depth professional background knowledge and a lot of experience with top gastronomy at home and abroad. Some have gastronomic training and have already worked as cooks or service staff in good houses, some are just gastro-mad career changers, professional hobby cooks, wine experts, journalists with a focus on travel and enjoyment.

Criteria when evaluating the restaurants and when classifying the kitchen performance

There are two categories here, which are separate from each other: on the one hand the kitchen performance and on the other hand the entire equipment, the ambience, the service quality or the wine and beverage offer of the restaurant. An upscale, award-worthy kitchen performance is awarded and classified with our pan symbol and point scale from 5 to 10 pans – for all other criteria the cutlery symbols stand for 1 to 5, which symbolically stands for a simple country inn to a luxury restaurant.

The Gusto pans

With the Gusto pans, only the kitchen performance of the respective restaurant is evaluated. The establishments awarded Pans offer cuisine that is particularly noteworthy in its category. We deliberately only use the imaginary rating scale of one to ten pans from five pans upwards, because in our opinion this is the threshold from simple, orderly and solid kitchen to above-average kitchen; in other words, a notable kitchen performance in its respective category. The “Pan Level” is intended to be a distinction and at the same time an incentive – the award-winning restaurants should stand out from the other addresses with this symbol and an evaluation. On the other hand, we think it is pointless and actually superfluous to also differentiate the kitchen performance in the area below the 5-pan level.

In any case, however, the following applies: Even in a house listed without pans, you can dine well. Depending on the occasion, expectations and taking into account the respective price level, the houses that have not been awarded a pan are also recommended.

For us, the harmony of the dishes always comes before creativity, careful preparation and good products before visual finesse. In the best case, however, all these criteria result in a harmonious whole.