The VAU-Team

Restaurants are a team effort. Kolja Kleeberg is only one of the many players at VAU, up front with the public and behind the scenes, hard at work making the restaurant a success.

Holger Schmidt has been one of the chefs de cuisine in Kolja Kleeberg's kitchen for four years, following stints in Austria and England. He is a gifted organizer, helping ensure that the VAU style shines through even at events outside the restaurant itself. Whether for 80 or 600 persons, when Holger Schmidt gets together with our partners from Berlin's Best the results are always stellar. The same applies to his work coordinating suppliers to VAU and checking out the interesting new products that flutter through our doors.
Marc Reus joined the team as a Chef de cuisine in 2006. Many would take him for a born-and-bred Briton – and he did in fact leave his home region of Fulda soon after his training and apprenticeship bound for England, where he cut his chops in the star kitchens of London. He returned to our shores after six years there and a longer stay in Australia and is now part of the VAU team. Marc Reus brings to the executive team an irreplaceable creativity, both in the implementation of his ideas for meat and fish and in his deft touch with personnel issues as well.
Stefan Winter has been with VAU for only a year now, but it's already impossible for us to imagine life without his creative desserts. For three years he wielded the whisk under colleague Matthias Buchholz at First Floor, honed his craft at Traube Tonbach and even cooked for the Minister of Defense. Now he is spoiling guests at VAU with his heavenly desserts.
Restaurant manager Luciano Paparatto is a familiar figure to many of VAU's regular guests. Among the stops on his path to us was Phillip Rochat's 3-star restaurant in Switzerland. Born in Calabria, he brings an air of Italian charm to the Gendarmenmarkt.
Sommelier Henry Perko discovered his love for wine at the Gutshaus Stolpe and Hotel de Rome; he now runs the restaurant's wine cellar, featuring some 500 different labels.
The management team is filled out with our long-time employee and friend Marcel Runge, whose congenial approach to being head waiter personifies the friendly, relaxed VAU style.

These are just a few of our team members. Only through the efforts of our entire crew can we create the atmosphere on hand in our house: relaxed, primed for enjoyment and yet filled with excitement.