Two-Michelin-Starred Chef Pascal Steffen is taking roots to the Maldives

For seven nights this October, one of Switzerland’s most compelling chefs will leave Basel for the remote Gaafu Alifu Atoll

His residency at The Halcyon Private Isles Maldives promises something more interesting than a temporary Michelin starred menu, bringing two landscapes together through what grows, swims and is harvested around them.

Pascal Steffen spends a considerable amount of time thinking about vegetables. At roots, his restaurant in Basel, a radish can command as much attention as a piece of meat. Corn becomes risotto. Vegetables are fermented, grilled, preserved, reduced into broths and assembled into dishes of remarkable intricacy. His signature Roots Garden changes with the seasons and can contain around 30 individual components, its composition dictated in large part by what is growing at Birsmattehof, the organic farm outside Basel that supplies much of his produce.

“The field determines my menu,” Steffen has told GaultMillau. It is an approach that has earned him two Michelin stars, 18 GaultMillau points and, for 2026, GaultMillau Switzerland’s Green Chef of the Year title. His cooking does include fish and meat, but they rarely assume automatic ownership of the plate. Vegetables establish the direction and everything else enters the conversation around them.

This October, the fields of Switzerland are about to give way to something very different. From 1 to 7 October, Steffen will take the philosophy of roots almost 8,000 kilometres southeast to The Halcyon Private Isles Maldives, where the ingredients around him will come from an entirely new landscape. Instead of Basel’s surrounding farmland, there will be herbs and vegetables grown in the resort’s Traveller’s Garden, seafood caught from the waters of Gaafu Alifu Atoll and Maldivian ingredients and culinary traditions to encounter for the first time.

The question of what a chef so closely connected to one landscape does when placed inside another makes this residency particularly compelling.

Two Islands, 38 Villas and a Very Different Pantry

The Halcyon occupies two private islands in Gaafu Alifu Atoll, deep in the southern Maldives. The scale is deliberately intimate. There are just 38 villas, each with a private pool and butler service, divided between beachfront accommodation on one island and overwater retreats on the other. Coral reefs and lagoons surround the property, while a PADI certified dive centre, ocean facing spa and the resort’s collection of restaurants establish much of the rhythm beyond the villas.

For a chef residency, that small scale presents an unusual advantage. There is little need to turn the visiting chef into a spectacle designed for hundreds of covers. The programme can remain genuinely intimate. Steffen will host two exclusive dinners during the residency, each limited to no more than 16 guests, alongside a hands on cooking class exploring his techniques and ingredient led philosophy. He will also work with The Halcyon’s culinary team to develop dishes specifically for the resort, with selected creations remaining on its menus after he returns to Switzerland.  

That final detail makes the collaboration more interesting. The residency is intended to leave something behind. The Halcyon currently has three signature restaurants. Thari, Yuzu and Firepit each occupy a different culinary space, while private dining can move elsewhere entirely, including lunches on secluded sandbanks and multicourse dinners beneath the night sky.

In the Maldives, where the physical environment is so dominant, removing dinner from four walls can fundamentally change the experience. Salt sits in the air. Sand cools after sunset. The sound of water replaces the familiar soundtrack of a dining room. Darkness arrives over an ocean largely free from the visual clutter of a city. For Steffen, whose food begins so emphatically with ingredients, the setting offers another ingredient of its own.

The Vegetable Whisperer Leaves Basel

Steffen’s reputation deserves some context because the language of sustainability has become extraordinarily easy for restaurants to adopt. His relationship with produce is considerably more tangible. GaultMillau describes him as a “vegetable whisperer,” and its decision to name him Green Chef of the Year was made with Bio Suisse. Steffen regularly visits Birsmattehof, a certified organic farm near Basel, and receives produce from the farm each week. Seasonal availability directly influences what appears at roots.

His Roots Garden is perhaps the clearest expression of that thinking. Around 30 seasonal components can appear in a single iteration, with vegetables treated through multiple techniques and textures rather than relegated to garnish. Elsewhere on the menu, fish, poultry, meat and crustaceans remain present, but the starting point is frequently botanical.

This is where the Maldives becomes fascinating. Steffen will not arrive with the same agricultural vocabulary available to him in Switzerland. Tropical humidity, ocean ecosystems, different growing conditions and a distinct culinary heritage will change what is possible. The residency therefore asks him to apply his philosophy without simply importing his pantry.

“We’re excited to discover an entirely new world of ingredients that will broaden our culinary perspective in such an extraordinary setting,” Steffen says. “Encounters like these inspire us just as much as they inspire our guests.” That sense of discovery is crucial. A successful chef residency should contain some creative risk. If an established chef simply reproduces the dishes of their home restaurant beside a prettier view, the destination becomes scenery. Here, the more interesting possibility lies in allowing the destination to alter the cooking.

When the Maldives Enters the Plate

The ingredients available at The Halcyon will form the foundation of the residency. Fresh seafood from the surrounding waters will meet herbs and vegetables from the Traveller’s Garden and other locally sourced ingredients. Steffen and the resort’s culinary team will use them to create menus informed by Maldivian flavours and traditions.

For a chef who uses fermentation extensively at roots, the exchange has particular potential. Fermentation is deeply embedded in food cultures around the world, yet the ingredients, climate and traditions surrounding it vary enormously. Taking techniques developed in a Swiss kitchen and applying them thoughtfully to tropical produce opens creative possibilities without requiring the food to lose its sense of place.

The distinction matters. International luxury resorts have spent decades flying prized ingredients across continents to recreate familiar European fine dining in distant destinations. That model still exists, but another form of luxury gastronomy has become increasingly compelling: one in which the chef’s skill is measured partly by how closely they are willing to look at what is already around them.

At The Halcyon, that means looking towards the garden, the surrounding sea and Maldivian culinary culture. General Manager Adriana Borcean describes the ambition as revealing “the spirit of a destination through its ingredients and traditions,” bringing Steffen’s perspective together with “the richness of the Maldives’ land and sea.” It is a particularly appropriate idea for an island nation.

Dining at the Edge of the World

Gaafu Alifu is one of the Maldives’ southern atolls, far removed from the density of resorts surrounding Malé. Getting there is part of the psychological transition. The further south one travels through the archipelago, the more the Maldives begins to reveal its enormous geographic scale. Hundreds of islands appear as fragments of green against an expanse of blue, reefs tracing pale turquoise rings through the Indian Ocean.

The Halcyon uses that remoteness as part of its identity. Its two island configuration separates beachfront and overwater living, while larger accommodations extend to two bedroom villas and the Grand Estate. The latter can sleep up to six and comes with an unusually extensive service structure including a Halcyon Butler, Kids Butler, Marine Butler and dedicated personal chef.

Yet the appeal of a culinary residency in this setting is found at a much smaller scale. Sixteen people around a table is small enough for the food to remain personal. A cooking class creates direct contact between chef and guest. Ingredients harvested nearby shorten the conceptual distance between landscape and plate. A dinner under an open Maldivian sky changes the sensory environment before the first course even arrives.

These are advantages that a conventional city restaurant cannot easily reproduce. For Steffen, accustomed to an intimate dining room in Basel, the transition may feel less radical than the geography suggests. roots itself recently moved to a smaller space with only nine tables, where chefs participate in serving and explaining dishes. The intimacy of the experience has become part of the restaurant’s character. In October, that intimacy travels to an island.

The Rise of the Culinary Residency

The timing also reflects a wider change in luxury travel. Food has moved steadily towards the centre of destination choice. Travellers cross cities for restaurant reservations, build itineraries around markets and harvests and increasingly expect resort dining to tell them something about where they are.

Chef residencies occupy an interesting place within this evolution because they create an experience that exists for a finite period. The guest is not simply choosing where to stay. They are choosing when. At their best, these collaborations can also create a genuine exchange between culinary cultures. The visiting chef brings techniques and perspective. The host team brings knowledge of local ingredients, suppliers, climate and traditions. Neither side needs to disappear inside the other.

The Halcyon and roots are planning precisely that kind of exchange. Before Steffen travels to the Maldives, roots in Basel will introduce a collaborative signature dish offering diners an early expression of the partnership. After the October residency ends, selected dishes created during the collaboration will remain at The Halcyon. The journey therefore runs in both directions. The Maldives enters a Basel kitchen before Basel arrives in the Maldives. Then a little of what happens on the islands remains after Steffen has gone home.

What Luxury Dining Can Learn From Place

There is something fitting about a restaurant called roots travelling so far from its own. The name speaks to origin, to what lies beneath the surface and to the relationship between cooking and the land that produces its ingredients. In Basel, that philosophy begins in Swiss soil. At The Halcyon, the same questions will be asked beside the Indian Ocean.

What grows here? What comes from these waters? What belongs to this landscape? What can a chef discover when familiar ingredients are removed and another place begins dictating the possibilities?

Those questions feel increasingly relevant to luxury hospitality.

The most memorable resort meals rarely survive in memory because an expensive ingredient appeared on the plate. They remain because food, atmosphere and geography briefly became inseparable. The taste of something unfamiliar becomes attached to warm night air. A particular dish belongs forever to the view across the water where it was eaten. The journey gives the food context, and the food gives the journey another way to be remembered.

For seven nights in October, Pascal Steffen will have an entirely new landscape from which to cook.

The vegetables of Basel will be thousands of kilometres away. Around him will be tropical gardens, coral reefs, Maldivian flavours and the Indian Ocean.

For a chef whose menu has always begun by asking what the landscape can provide, that distance from home may be precisely what makes this residency worth travelling for.