Two school friends sit over a beer in the kitchen of their shared flat and wonder whether you could combine the tenderness of a beef fillet with the flavour of an entrecôte. Both are trained polymechanics; one, Marco Tessaro, is studying tourism and hospitality, the other, Lucas Oechslin, is a budding biotechnologist. Fifteen years later, that thought experiment has grown into the 30-strong company Luma Delikatessen.
And the answer to the beer-fuelled origin question is: yes, a symbiosis of these two cuts does succeed – with a noble mould. It took them three years to find the right fungus, which tenderises the meat in a controlled way. What it’s called remains a trade secret; the process they confidently call «lumifying». Sounds like a word that should make it into the dictionary? «We’re working on it,» Tessaro jokes.
Imitators Have So Far Failed
Meat sprayed with this mould is incredibly tender. That takes some serious quality work: first, the meat must reach Luma’s production four to five days after slaughter. The five employed butchers spray it with the fungus – around four billion spores per centimetre. «You need that many so all the others are driven out,» Tessaro knows. Spores are everywhere, in the air and indeed on the meat too. The intricate process only works if there’s enough of their noble fungus. They had the method patented – rivals have tried it, but so far no one has managed to launch a comparable product.
Tessaro tells us this at the restaurant Chez Smith in Zurich’s Binz industrial district, in which Luma is a partner. The place is empty, the lunch guests back in their offices; in the back room a birthday party is being set up, gold and black balloons waiting to be installed. «Last week the band Hecht played at a glittering wedding.»
Cultivating Mould in the Flatshare Fridge
This used to be a joinery, as the lovely wooden floor attests; today the room is rented out for events and holds around 200 people. «Eighty is already fun,» says managing director Mathias Bamert. Next door, where there was once a screen-printing shop, sausage courses are now held, and in a «Meat Academy» meat aficionados learn how to cut up a loin, what the cuts are called and how differently beef tastes depending on whether the animals were fed grass, grain or maize.
Speaking of cuts: in Switzerland, Luma made the so-called «second cuts» better known. «Onglet had long been known elsewhere; we lagged a bit behind.» Luma even gave the «chain steak» its name, now used by others too. «Of course that makes us proud.» They were also proud of their mould culture, which once thrived in the flatshare fridge – under control, on glass plates. Today they work in a butchery in Neuhausen am Rheinfall.
The procedure seems simple: the fungus takes ten days before it’s even visible. Pork matures in four weeks, beef in five to six. «For the fillet, three weeks are plenty.» At its peak of flavour the meat is flash-frozen and shipped with dry ice. «We’ve delivered as far as Greece. Because the meat is deep-frozen and the dry ice lasts up to 48 hours, it works flawlessly.»
The Online Butchery Flourishes
Luma is a partner in three restaurants, but that wasn’t strategic. «We’ve known these people for a long time.» The core business is top chefs and Michelin-starred restaurants. Even before Covid there was an online shop with three products; when the pandemic loomed, they drew up a contingency plan. «We launched a range of new products we didn’t have in our range yet.» During the lockdowns the online butchery boomed, orders multiplied, everyone stood in the cold store packing parcels. «We were well set up for Covid – but also bold, and we invested a lot in advertising.»
Opening a meat restaurant at a time when meat consumption is hotly debated is equally bold. The meat Luma doesn’t source in Switzerland comes, for instance, from Spain. «We visit the producers and know how the animals are raised.» The clientele is primarily male. «But when women order, they spend more.» With Chez Smith and a lighter concept, Luma wants to appeal more to women too. «You don’t want to eat a tomahawk at lunchtime and then roll back to the office,» says Tessaro. Then again – why not, really?
This article appeared in MEN issue 2/24 (November 2024).
