In September, Rote Wand will hand over its kitchens, terraces and long tables to some of the most exciting chefs working today, with careers that span Mexico City to Zurich, Florence, New York, Rome, Munich and Rovinj. The Shef’s Edition Vol. 1 brings together cooks with distinct styles and perspectives, united by a shared commitment to product, identity, hospitality and food that speaks for itself.
The line-up is the draw: Karime López, Daniela Soto-Innes, Elif Oskan, Zineb Hattab, Maša Salopek, Victoria Blamey, Rosina Ostler, Raphaela Wirrer, Chiara Panozzo and Sarah Cicolini. Instead of the usual festival model, where women are tucked into a side theme and asked to explain themselves before they can cook, this programme hands them the weekend: dinners, talks, live cooking, dessert, fondue, mountain walks, late lunches and direct exchange with guests.
In Zug, near Lech am Arlberg, Rote Wand has turned food into one of its most powerful cultural languages.Its Summer Kult programme runs through the warmer months with guest dinners, wine events, artist residencies, conversations and open-air cooking. The Shef’s Edition sits naturally inside that larger season, with the kitchen becoming a meeting point for chefs who arrive with their own histories rather than a single assigned message.
The public programme begins on Friday with arrival, a welcome drink and the Rote Wand evening menu. Saturday moves into the mountains with the Zuger Bergbahn and a walk to Skyspace Lech, James Turrell’s installation above Oberlech, before a late lunch on the terrace and Dinner Roulette in the evening. Sunday is the main act: a champagne reception, finger food, introductions to the chefs, a talk, a live cooking festival with different food stands, a dessert lounge and a fondue evening with the chefs.
The scale of the weekend becomes clear when you look at the chefs behind it.
Karime López, originally from Mexico, became the first Mexican woman to earn a Michelin star while at Gucci Osteria in Florence. She has now returned to Mexican soil at XAAK, in Hotel Xcaret Arte on the Riviera Maya, where she cooks contemporary Mexican cuisine with ingredients such as native maize, cacao, melipona honey, citrus, flowers, ferments and coastal seafood. The name evokes the Mayan baskets traditionally hung in homes to keep food safe and ready to share, a useful clue to the restaurant’s spirit: protected, generous, rooted and modern. López’s cooking carries the technique she honed abroad, but its centre of gravity is now firmly Mexican.
The names give the weekend its range. Daniela Soto-Innes, now at Rubra in Mexico, became the World’s Best Female Chef in 2019 after gaining international attention in New York at Cosme. Her cooking has often been associated with Mexican roots, energy, generosity and a strong sense of team culture. In the context of Rote Wand, she brings a style of hospitality that treats precision and ease as compatible ideas.
Elif Oskan, from Gül in Zurich, brings Turkish-rooted cooking through the lens of the ocakbaşı grill, Swiss produce and a highly contemporary restaurant culture. Her food has the directness of smoke and bread, but also the control of someone who trained in demanding kitchens, including The Fat Duck. She understands fire as flavour, labour and social temperature.
Zineb Hattab, from Kle in Zurich, brings one of Switzerland’s most distinctive plant-based kitchens. Kle became the country’s first fully plant-based restaurant to receive both a Michelin star and a Green Star. Hattab’s work draws on Moroccan and Spanish influences, engineering logic, texture and clarity of flavour. She gives vegetables weight, structure and authority.
Maša Salopek, now leading the pastry concept at Cap Aureo in Rovinj after more than five years as head pastry chef at Hiša Franko, brings dessert into the centre of the conversation. Her work is shaped by travel, culture, seasonality and a precise handling of flavour and texture. In a festival built around culinary handwriting, pastry deserves this kind of visibility.
Victoria Blamey adds one of the most intellectually rigorous voices in the line-up. Born in Chile and based in New York, she has cooked in some of the city’s most demanding kitchens and developed a reputation for food that is product-led, personal and exact. Her cooking tends to resist easy categorisation, which is usually a sign that something interesting is happening.
Sarah Cicolini brings Rome through Santo Palato, a restaurant that has helped give Roman trattoria cooking a new contemporary force. Rosina Ostler arrives from Alois in Munich with the control and detail of a two-Michelin-starred kitchen. Raphaela Wirrer brings the regional intelligence of Hirschen in Schwarzenberg. Chiara Panozzo extends the weekend’s geography to Verona.
What makes The Shef’s Edition most compelling is its structure. A chef talk has value, but the real substance will come from proximity: watching how these chefs approach product, how they edit a dish for an outdoor festival, how they translate their restaurants into a mountain setting, how they cook beside one another rather than in isolation. The programme builds different speeds of encounter. A formal dinner gives one kind of attention, a food stand another, and fondue after a festival day a third — probably with better gossip.
The Shef’s Edition also lands at a moment when the conversation around women in gastronomy needs fewer ceremonial panels and more serious platforms: places where women can collaborate, build networks and present their own narratives on their own terms. Rote Wand has the infrastructure, the audience and the appetite for that. In September, ten chefs with strong culinary voices will use this alpine weekend not to symbolise representation, but to get on with the work of cooking, connecting and making their presence felt.
Practical information
Event: The Shef’s Edition Vol. 1
Dates: 4 to 7 September 2026
Location: Rote Wand, Zug, Lech am Arlberg, Austria