Tanja Grandits and her passion for detail

Touch, smell, taste. Our senses are the key to pleasure and wellbeing. If you surrender to your senses you live more intensely, you’re more at one with yourself and you strengthen your roots – according to Tanja Grandits. In the life of the multi-talented top chef, intensity and calm are close companions. Not just in the kitchen, where her poetic interplay of aromas and colours never fails to produce surprises, but in her personal life too, fragrance and colour play a key role for Tanja Grandits.

As a woman, mother and top chef, Tanja Grandits is confronted on a daily basis with challenges that demand energy, calm and endurance. “That’s why I take particularly good care of my body: from practising yoga and conscious breathing to eating healthy, nourishing food. I have a holistic approach to wellbeing,” says the ambitious top chef.

Tanja Grandits’ life is packed with contrasts, the peace and quiet of her private life never far away from the frenetic activity and total perfection of the kitchen at the Stucki restaurant in Basel. Not only are the two places geographically close, as Tanja Grandits and her daughter Emma live two floors above Stucki, but the restaurant is never far from her thoughts, either. Yet despite the fact that superwoman Grandits pours all her energy into her work at the restaurant, after a hard day in the kitchen she still loves to come home and prepare a nourishing meal for herself and her daughter. Nor is there any stopping her going back into the kitchen late in the evening to make granola from scratch so they can start the next day with a healthy, freshly roasted breakfast that smells wonderful.

“I always do yoga before breakfast, though,” says Grandits. Conscious breathing and reflecting on her roots, that’s what gives her energy, centres her thoughts and prepares her mind and body for the day ahead. She does yoga surrounded with oils and scents – approaching it in exactly the same way as cooking, with all her senses. This is how she describes her philosophy: “being good to my body, treating it well and nourishing it – with both positive thoughts and healthy food. That’s what gives me energy and strength.”

This feeling of being a strong woman who can do anything and who also looks after herself is something Tanja Grandits shares with her friend and yoga teacher Claudia Stich. Which is why they founded Ginger & Grace together. “It’s about trusting your body and building up your own personal strength. As women we do so many things that we ourselves and the world around us often take for granted. We do these things gladly, but often we forget to look after ourselves. Ginger & Grace celebrates us being women and helps us make ourselves stronger, by doing good to our bodies and minds and by taking care of them,” says Grandits. With this objective, the two women organize a variety of different activities, workshops and projects, for example a yoga workshop where women can meet and then get to know one another over a soul-nourishing breakfast. That’s why yoga and cooking go so well together, says Grandits, because “you’re doing something good for your body.”

Tanja Grandits’ passion for living life using all her senses is also reflected in her culinary creations. She puts them together so carefully and harmoniously you could almost say they are yoga on a plate. They are delightful in every way, stimulating all the senses. The colours combine perfectly for visual appeal, while individual taste components deliver both surprises and moments of bliss.

For Tanja Grandits, moments of bliss are those moments when everything is perfect, it’s suddenly calm, and you feel completely at one with yourself. They could be such things as seeing her daughter’s smile in the morning, a moment of inspiration in the kitchen, or consciously focusing on breathing in and out during a yoga session. They can be moments you experience alone, or moments shared with others. Moments of perfection.

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