From beer to cocktails, from home-style cooking to fusion, from early morning to late at night, the Glockenbachviertel serves every gastronomic taste with its high density of restaurants. If you want to survive here, you have to know what you’re doing. Just like Alexander Glocker and Lukas Stepper. At Glockenbach 8, where the Glockenbach branches off from the Westermühlbach into the underground, they have been with their wine bar “Avin” since the beginning of April New Kids on the Block.
The two Munich young restaurateurs met more than five years ago during their training in the hotel industry. Glocker went to Hamburg to study, Stepper completed a sommelier training and took part in the tapas Vietnamese “Tivu” on Rumfordstraße. The Avin is now their first store together. Here, too, they rely on a sharing concept based on Stepper’s area of expertise, wine.
Whether it’s the food, the drinks or the furnishings: the wine bar Avin always sets the right accents.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
When choosing wine, it is worth listening to the recommendations of the hosts.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
With moderation, style and quality, he and Glocker set the right accents for food, drinks and furnishings. The small outdoor area in front of the large arched window is still well occupied, soon the guests will be drawn inside, to the benches and chairs upholstered in earth tones and rust red, to the elegant bar counter on the second level, or to the room-filling wooden high table in the wine bottle-lined area booth.
The drinks menu has also been curated with care. The focus is clearly on the wines, cocktails are deliberately avoided. They don’t want to be a “drink bar,” explains Glocker, but rather a place to linger over a fine glass of wine. When it comes to aperitifs, however, you will come across their own creations with vermouth, such as the citrus-fresh “Umeshuspritz” or the soft “Modern Negroni” with sake for ten euros each.
Small dishes are served with the wine at the Avin.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
The range of dishes changes monthly.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Sorted by grape variety and region, the wine list comprises almost ten pages, from open wines from just under six euros for a 0.1 glass to Bordeaux at four-digit bottle prices. If you like, you can safely do without this reading in order to be guided by the expertise of the hosts. At least one of them is always on site and mingles with the unobtrusive, relaxed service team. Whether it’s fine-bubble champagne, a spicy-fruity white cuvée from Vienna, or a cold Merlot from Burgenland, every recommendation is a hit.
Originally, the small dishes for sharing at the Avin were only supposed to “set the wines down”, as Glocker says, but they change monthly, are constantly being expanded and could easily overtake the focus on the wine. Modern and high-quality dishes between eight and 14 euros are presented on a slate, each plate makes you want to eat the next. Two fresh oysters with cucumber-gin vinaigrette, gyoza in a hearty broth, beef from the sizzling salt stone as a highlight and cheesecake cream with apricot and butter biscuit crumble to finish. Because at Avin they know what they’re doing.
avineAm Glockenbach 8, 80469 Munich, email: [email protected]Opening hours: Monday to Friday 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday 1 p.m. to 11 p.m