Sought-after districts like the Glockenbach are used to constantly changing restaurants. And yet it is not often that premises accommodate the third concept within a year, as recently at Ickstattstrasse 21. Not far from the banks of the Isar, the S. Zimmer, not to be confused with Käfer’s dining room in the BMW World, celebrated its reopening at the end of January at the old location .
From July 2021 to August 2022, the wine bar with restaurant had already moved in here, and from summer to the end of the year it was sublet to the Gasthaus Waltz. So now the S. Zimmer is making a second attempt.
The managing director and namesake Sascha Zimmer is actually a civil engineer and commutes between Munich and his engineering office in Saarland. So he stays in the background at S. Zimmer and leaves the field to his wife Petra Grunder. She is a thoroughbred restaurateur and has been for about 30 years.
She takes her time when selecting her team, there is still a lack of service, management and sommeliers. On the first try, the team lined up too quickly, it just didn’t fit, explains Zimmer. That was also the reason for the six-month break. So until the staff gets together little by little, you can rely on the cordial service and the wine recommendations of the two operators.
When it comes to wine, the expertise lies with Sascha Zimmer. His passion for Tuscan red wines gave him the impetus to set up his own wine bar. In the S. room, for example, there are two different wine lists, a standard one and a special list with so-called Supertoscanern, a designation for mostly red wines from Tuscany, which do not meet the guidelines of the “Denominazione di Origine Controllata”, DOC for short, but do nevertheless outperform many a DOC wine in terms of quality and distinction.
His passion for Tuscan red wines gave Sascha Zimmer the impetus to set up his own wine bar.
(Photo: Leonhard Simon)
Zimmer has collected Super Tuscans of various vintages, including Sassicaias and Ornellaias from the 1990s. He even makes high-priced wines accessible to his guests. He uses a needle to extract a test quantity through the cork, while the bottle remains closed due to the inert gases supplied. You can taste a 2011 Tignanello for less than 40 euros without having to buy the whole bottle for 280 euros.
In a limited space, so many wine bottles become the dominant feature of the interior, be it in the side room lined with refrigerators or in the main room, where red wines wait upside down in a wooden wall fixture for their big moment. Speaking of upside down, it’s not disco balls that create sparkling lighting effects from the ceiling, but rather wine glasses suspended from their stems. Including lots of green – the color of the Isar, says Zimmer – and a small corner counter with four bar seats.
Of course you could only spend the evening in the S. room with wine and that would be enough to deal with. The new menu should not be missed anyway. With Sepehr Alipour and Jonas Ulbrecht, Zimmer was able to win a young and creative cooking duo. Both previously worked together in the mural, whose handwriting comes through in the menu of the S. Zimmer: Regional and seasonal, reduced to the essentials and used holistically.
In the S. room the ceiling is decorated with wine glasses.
(Photo: Leonhard Simon)
The dishes from Sepehr Alipour and Jonas Ulbrecht go well with the wine.
(Photo: Leonhard Simon)
For example, Ulbrecht serves his homemade trout-based miso soup with a sparkling wine aperitif. Beef tartare (16 euros), savoy cabbage in salt dough with scamorza (21 euros) or the matured pork chop (32 euros) go wonderfully with the full-bodied, cold Valpolicella Ripasso (7.50 euros).
The mushroom tartare with smoked fish foam (12 euros) and the carp roulade with savoy cabbage and black salsify (24 euros) are particularly successful. And anyone who has looked too deeply into the wine glass with so many courses on Saturday evening can return to the scene of the crime the next morning and counteract the hangover at Sunday brunch with brioche, quiche and co.
S roomIckstattstraße 21, 80469 Munich, phone 089/20207390, opening hours: Thursday to Saturday 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday brunch 11 a.m. to 5 p.m