Max Hassel

Max Hassel (born 19 October 1954) is a Marianan celebrity chef and restaurateur. Hassel has long been a mainstay of the Marianan restaurant scene, having been one of the pioneers of the "New Marianan Cuisine" in the late 1980s. Many top chefs today began their career in one of Hassel's kitchens.

Career
Hassel studied cuisine in Austria in the mid-1970s and did further studies in Mariana in 1978-1980. He worked briefly at a Vienna restaurant and in Mariana worked at several small restaurants. In 1983, he became a cook at the renown Osorio, working under classic chef Maarten Osorio. Eventually in 1988 he was promoted to head chef, but in 1990 left to start his own restaurant.

In 1990 MH opened in Palma to great acclaim, receiving a Michelin Star in 1992 and a second one in 1994, but then closing down to later open the much more French inspired Le Marquis. While a lot of effort was put into this restaurant, he never found the recognition from his first one and failed to win Michelin stars. Le Marquis closed in 2004.

In 2005, he opened the successful Old Port Bistro, typical of his modern cuisine style. The restaurant would earn him 3 Michelin stars by 2011, but he lost one in 2014. While a highly popular and fairly expensive restaurant, many critics consider the restaurant to be banking solely on Hassel's name and fame. Still, culinary magazine Monde Culinaire has name it in their top 20 since 2008, and he has received numerous awards for the restaurant.

He has since opened Cafesne, in Ciutadella, a small restaurant serving light fare. With Cafesne he has introduced the Pitana to the upper levels of fine dining, creating some with exotic ingredients while remaining true to the street food's origins.

His most ambitious project yet is Conundrum, a restaurant in San Francisco, which combines Marianan and Sierran Cuisine. Conundrum opened in April 2013 and received two Michelin stars by 2016; upon opening reservations were booked for seven months.

Influence
Hassel was one of the promoters and creators of the New Marianan Cuisine movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, that made smaller, lighter dishes focused on greater variation and presentation over the traditional food of the previous decades.

Many chefs in Mariana, such as Ricardo Villes at Zigzag, John Preston at Synesthesia started out in his kitchens (at MH and Old Port Bistro, respectively.