Chef Norbert Niederkofler Teaches Ethical Cooking in El Gouna

The kitchen at the German Hotel School El Gouna settled into a measured quiet as the room filled — young chefs, students, and cooks gathering around stainless-steel benches in a space that has shaped hospitality talent in El Gouna for years. It was a fitting site for the first masterclass led by Chef Norbert Niederkofler — one of the driving forces behind 35 Flavors of El Gouna, the culinary showcase held in partnership with Atelier Norbert Niederkofler Temporary, and the anchor of the wider Taste El Gouna platform. The afternoon reflected the same architecture that defines the entire initiative: sustainability embraced as a guiding practice, collaboration as framework, and technique tied to landscape rather than performance.

“It’s very important to have tradition,” he told the room, speaking with the same direct calibration seen across his work. “To understand the roots, understand where you come from… because food is culture.”
The line set the tone: clarity, continuity, and a reminder that responsibility in the kitchen begins with an understanding of place.

The hands-on session opened with the grouper dish Norbert prepared for the Botanica flagship dinner - a plate that normally belongs to the repertoire of Atelier Moessmer but was recalibrated for Egypt’s Red Sea. Instead of importing familiar elements, he rebuilt the dish through what the environment offered, folding in greens grown directly in Botanica’s hydroponic beds.

“We make full use of every part of our ingredients: we don’t create dishes first and then deal with the waste, but design them from the start to generate none.” he explains.

To illustrate the discipline behind it, he described the biodiversity of his own kitchen. At Atelier Moessmer, he and his team work with 400 to 500 types of vegetables, mushrooms, berries, and wild herbs. The number grounded the conversation: ethical cuisine is not abstract. It is built on diversification, observation, and precise decisions made daily.

The young chefs attending the 'Cook the Red Sea' masterclass - inspired by chef Norbert's 'Cook the Mountain' philosophy - moved closer, pressing him on yield, trimming, and selection. They observed how he chooses between two herbs, how he calculates quantity, where he draws the line between necessary and wasteful. Norbert answered each one carefully, then shifted the discussion to where that discipline comes from. “My family didn’t have money,” he said. “They had a small business, and I wanted to see the world. The easiest and best way to see the world is through working in a kitchen.”

By the time the session closed, the kitchen had taken on the same steady rhythm present in the broader Taste El Gouna platform. The masterclass didn’t aim to impress; it aimed to align — grounding the culinary showcase in the realities that sustain it: Egyptian ingredients handled with precision, sustainability embedded as process, and international voices working alongside El Gouna’s next generation of chefs. The afternoon underscored El Gouna’s role as a hub where local and global talent meet in a shared, technical dialogue — a place where knowledge moves in both directions and craft evolves through exchange. Students stayed long after the final explanation, revisiting the produce on the tables, discussing ratios, and continuing conversations that extended the masterclass into its own quiet continuation — a clear reflection of the cultural architecture the town is shaping.