With this name, you at least know what it’s about and what’s available here in the Hofstatt: Bar Tatar. That means: It’s open in the evening and the main food is tartare in three different variations. As Japanese beef tartar, salmon trout tartar and vegetarian carrot tartar. The bar is actually the Kaffeewerk café bar, deep in the heart of the shopping arcade on Sendlinger Straße. There are several reasons why star chef Tohru Nakamura has set up his latest pop-up project here.
The most important: The conversion – and with it the opening – of his bistro Schreiberei on the ground floor of Burgstraße 5, in addition to the two-star gourmet restaurant on the first floor, is still dragging on a little. Mainly due to the pandemic, there is still a lack of raw materials and building materials for the renovation of the listed medieval town hall. So it will probably be in mid-July until it opens. The plan was actually May. But the kitchen and bar team is already here and wants to keep busy. So it was a good thing that Marc Uebelherr, business partner of Nakamura and Felix Radmer, owner of Burgstraße 5, not only runs the pizzeria Oh Julia in the Hofstatt, but also recently, together with other partners, the day café Kaffeewerk with coffee from the company’s own roastery Werkviertel.
So the two of them parked their new writing team in the Hofstatt for the time being. And this team is almost overqualified for a simple bar with cold dishes – the restaurant license does not allow more here. Chef Tom Heeg has previously cooked at the Hotel Cortiina’s Grapes wine bar and will do the same in the writing department when the time comes. The sommelier and restaurant manager is Max Haussmann, who has previously taken care of the wines in the Michelin-star restaurant Mural. And bar manager David Lindner was most recently manager in the Salon Pitzelberger, the bar in the basement of the Gärtnerplatztheater. For the time being, they will be working in the Hofstatt from Monday to Thursday from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
You can already guess where the culinary journey will take you, even if the kitchen stays cold for the time being. Chef Heeg has worked with Nakamura to develop three programmatic tartare dishes; miso, ginger and parmesan are involved in the Japanese beef tartare, and the later writing also wants to cross French and Japanese cuisine. The salmon trout tartare is paired with toasted sesame seeds and salted lemon, and the vegetarian “colorful carrot tartare” also includes cumin, tapioca, and shiitake. The prices are already high at 21.50 to 16.50 euros. The same applies to wine: 0.1 liters cost between five and ten euros.