Two Surnames, One Star
- Aug 5
- 4 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
By Silvia Gonzalo, correspondent in Germany
In Essen, Hans Lange Rodríguez, son of a German father and a Bolivian mother, cooks two inheritances that live in him as a single energy.
In western Germany, Essen was the city of the Krupps, the steel dynasty, and it is still home to Zollverein, the coal-mining complex declared a World Heritage Site. In Rüttenscheid, the city's dining district, that past literally holds up the tables of a restaurant: the pedestals were built from metal salvaged from the 1930 plants, and on sheets of that same salvaged metal the chef had the Salar de Uyuni printed. Ruhr iron now holds the light of a salt desert.
The restaurant is called Teko by Lange Rodriguez, and since October 2023 it has concentrated its entire kitchen into a single tasting menu, of five or seven courses. In June 2026, at the ceremony in Frankfurt, it entered history: no kitchen drawing on a Bolivian pantry had ever earned a Michelin star before. Teko's was the first.
German critics had certified it long before. Three F's from Der Feinschmecker. Two toques from Gault & Millau. Three Varta diamonds, three Schlemmeratlas spoons, seven Gusto pans. A complete dossier before the star, the distinction the Guide reserves for high-quality cooking, the kind worth a stop.
The two surnames on the sign are his parents': Lange, from his German father; Rodríguez, from his Bolivian mother. Behind that name stands Hans Lange Rodríguez. His childhood unfolded through long Bolivian Sundays, when grandparents and uncles cooked for the whole family and the table lasted all afternoon. He studied economics and, while still a student, did his first apprenticeship in the kitchen of a restaurant in the city. In 2015 he left the desk for what he calls his way of living. Years later everything returned to its axis. That same restaurant opened again for him, and in 2023 he walked through its door as the owner. “I wanted to cook what was mine.”
His European training allows him to approach the German repertoire with complete freedom. Pfefferpotthast, the Ruhr stew heavy with onion and green pepper, appears on his menu with the Bolivian ají peppers he adds to it, and with an emulsion of huacataya and quirquiña, Andean herbs of minted perfume and citrus edge that reach the table before the dish does. Sauerkraut with Kasseler, an absolute canon of German cooking, arrives transformed into dessert: sauerkraut ice cream fermented as tradition demands, miso paste, Bolivian sweet potato cream and a sauce of Amazonian fruits where sweetness and acidity arrive together.
He cooks for the soul. Behind every dish there is a frequency of its own, something that also exists in an ethereal dimension. The name was born far from Germany. In 2019, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, he cooked with his friend Eric Saldías a dinner made of the flavors of the Amboró, where the Andes come down to meet the Amazon. In Guaraní, teko names a way of being and of dwelling in the world.
The dining room is in the hands of Chantal Lange Rodríguez, German sommelière and Hans's wife, who chooses the glass for each course. Alongside the German labels she uncorks wines from the Valle de Cinti, in southern Bolivia, where the vines climb the trees at over two thousand meters and have borne fruit for four and a half centuries. In 2026 they won the German final of the Copa Jerez together, the international sherry pairing competition.
Bolivia and Germany meet each night at a table in Essen. Since June, a Michelin star shines above them.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
You were studying economics at university when you decided to devote yourself to gastronomy. What happened?
“Economics taught me to think in numbers, but the kitchen was always there, waiting for me. Leaving a safe path for an uncertain one was hard, but I never regretted it.”
When did the German and the Bolivian first meet in one of your creations?
“It wasn’t planned, it was natural. I grew up between two cultures that always coexisted in my life, and sooner or later they were going to coexist on my plates too. It isn’t fusion: it’s Teko.”
What materials, colors and objects define the space at Teko?
“We look for calm and authenticity: wood, stone, warm tones. Bolivian craftwork is present, but without falling into cliché.”
With your star, Bolivia wrote a page that did not exist in its culinary history. What happened in the country when the news arrived?
“The most moving part was feeling that this wasn’t only Teko’s. Messages came from cooks, producers, students, people I had never met. All with the same joy, the same pride, the same excitement.”
Where do you want to take Teko's culinary vision in the coming years?
“I want to keep going deeper into the Bolivian identity of our cooking: finding producers, ingredients almost nobody knows. And to keep bringing together the Bolivian and the German, because that is where I find an authentic way of expressing who I am.”
Teko by Lange Rodriguez
Wegenerstraße 3, Essen-Rüttenscheid, Germany
