The rib has a pretty battered reputation, one has to admit. As a spare rib, it leads a shadowy existence in the beer gardens, is often cooked to death over the grill, consists mostly of bones, the scarce meat leftovers tend to get stuck between the teeth and usually have to be flavored with a large dollop of strong barbecue sauce. So far, the gastronomic career ended at best for the ribs in the roasting pan for the sauce stocks in better restaurants, nothing more came of that.
Two Munich restaurateurs now want to change that: the hotelier Max Schlereth, owner of the Derag-Livinghotels, and Moritz Haake, head of the “Burger & Lobster Bank” on Prannerstrasse, the Jacob-Bar on Lenbachplatz and soon also joint tenants of the Haxen-Grills am Platzl, the former Haxnbauer. “We want to give the ribs back their value,” say the two. “Until now, they have been neglected and neglected in the catering industry.” Now Haake and Schlereth want to show what can be found in spareribs: a lot of meat, cooked tenderly, pork, beef and veal delicacies. And by the way, this is also a market niche that has not yet been filled.
The two met three years ago and just happened to start talking about ribs and what to make with them. This is how the idea of opening his own restaurant came about. In Schlereth’s hotel on the Viktualienmarkt, the lease for the vegetarian star restaurant Tian expired at the end of 2022. And so he decided to make a kind of U-turn and open the joint meat restaurant there.
After half a year of renovations, the time has come. When you walk in, you feel a bit transported to a film set from the 1930s. Behind, the sun with its rays of shining brass, the filigree columns – has something of the two monumental hams “The Tiger of Eschnapur” and “The Indian Tomb”. Max Schlereth thinks it fits, after all this is supposed to be a temple for eating meat, more precisely: for an underestimated piece of meat that gets the big stage here. And indeed: the different pieces of meat are not simply served on a plate, but rather vertically on a wooden board with support bars, like in a monstrance, so to speak. The staging extends to the dessert menu. Their star is the spaghetti ice cream for twelve euros with different toppings; it is freshly noodled onto the plate at the table with a special machine, and there is a separate spaghetti ice cream cart.
Marinated for three days, cooked in the oven for 24 hours
A lot of care was also taken with the ribs, Moritz Haake can report. Together with his head chef Mario Ramsbacher and Dominik Franke, he spent three years looking for butchers who could deliver the best quality meat and tinkered with the recipes. Now the ribs with meat between 400 and 500 grams are marinated for three to four days. Some of them stay in the oven for up to 24 hours, where they are gently cooked at a low temperature and then glazed and grilled until they almost fall off the bone by themselves. The main dishes cost between 22 and 29 euros, but there are also salad bowls, pinsa and a “prime sandwich” as well as various starters. A proprietary development are the “Crispy Spareribs Cheese Balls” on a bed of lettuce, reminiscent of Spanish meat croquetas.
Restaurateurs Max Schlereth and Moritz Haake think: spare ribs have been neglected for too long.
(Photo: Catherine Hess/Catherina Hess)
As you can see, supposedly inferior cuts of meat are extravagantly refined here. Didn’t the Derag-Livinghotel at the Viktualienmarkt in 2014 claim to be particularly sustainable? And wasn’t that why the branch of the famous Viennese Tian restaurant was opened here? That’s right, says Max Schlereth, who is not only CEO of Derag-Livinghotels, but also a philosopher and economics professor in St. Gallen. He points out that the St. Ribs works with a product that is usually available in large quantities but is not processed according to its value. In this respect, says Schlereth, his new restaurant is also sustainable again: “Precisely because meat is a special resource and is not or should not be available endlessly, we want to show with the St. Ribs how eating meat is good and right.”
The St. Rib officially celebrates its opening next Monday, after which it will be open Monday to Saturday from 5 p.m. to midnight. Reservations can be made by calling 089/565 67 23 and online at www.opentable.de possible.