Munich: The French restaurant “Austernkeller” has to close – Munich

Next year it would have been there for exactly 50 years, the “Austernkeller” at Stollbergstraße 11. But if you now call the telephone number of the long-established restaurant, you only hear a tape announcement: “After almost 50 years in Stollbergstraße, you have to It is with great regret that we are discontinuing our business operations immediately and permanently.” The deep disappointment can be clearly heard in the voice.

Since 1974, the cellar restaurant south of Maximilianstraße had specialized in classic French cuisine. Of course, as the name suggests, there were oysters and lots of other seafood and fish – but by no means only that. From the “French onion soup La Gratinée” and the “Snails with garlic butter in clay pots” to the roasted rack of lamb with thyme jus, there was a broad cross-section of French cuisine.

The “Austernkeller” was known above all for its dishes with fish and seafood, ideally embodied in the classic bouillabaisse, here mostly with filets of Dorade, Lotte and Victoria perch. According to the SZ taster from 2017, “the French-influenced culinary culture of the 1970s has survived surprisingly correctly” in the oyster cellar. The critic Felix Mostrach remarked slightly mockingly: “Even the no longer very young staff in white dresses still acts as ceremoniously as if they were working in one of the first star German restaurants of the 1970s.”

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Unfortunately, the journey through time in the old town has come to an end. In fact, a whole series of factors caused the closure of the “Austernkeller” and was the decisive factor in the fact that the owners Alexander and Brigitte Knobl neither wanted nor were able to continue. Knobl himself was a man from the very beginning, he started his gastronomic career in 1974 in the “Austernkeller” and bought the restaurant from the previous owner in 2007.

“Lobster has cost a lot more since the fall season than it used to, it’s crazy”

“We would have liked to have celebrated 50 years,” he says on the phone. But it’s always been a fluctuating business; a basement restaurant without outdoor space naturally does its main business in winter and spring, and that’s exactly when there have been lockdowns in the catering trade in recent years. “We still haven’t received the support payments for 2021,” says Knobl, “we first had to explain why we have so little income in the summer. The main season has practically disappeared twice for us.”

In addition, the restaurant, like many others, had to deal with staffing problems after the last lockdown, and the price increases soon got to him: “Since the autumn season, lobster has cost a lot more than it used to, it’s crazy.”

Finally, there were new requirements from the municipal authorities, the premises would have to be extensively renovated. The homeowners, on the other hand, are not willing to do this, and the family that owns the restaurant cannot handle it financially on their own: “It just doesn’t pay off.” In any case, this indicates that a restaurant will not move into Stollbergstraße 11 after the “Austernkeller”.