If you want to make a splash as a young chef today, quickly and easily, you should cook like the great role models between 1900 and 1980: with ingredients from all over the world that are as exotic as possible. This can cause a stir again, because the new credo is: Cook sustainably, regionally and seasonally so that you conserve resources and do not harm the environment. There is hardly a kitchen artist far and wide who does not mention the terms regional and seasonal when trying to explain his cooking style.
The Nordic school from Denmark to Sweden, which is very strict in this respect and works exclusively with products that are only available locally, has long since found imitators in Germany. In Munich, where, like in other arts, people still value conservative workmanship in cooking, people were hesitant for a long time. Recently, however, there is the Mural Farmhouse in Obersendling. It is actually an offshoot of the star restaurant Mural in the old town, which has found a home in the new hotel of the English Locke Group in the industrial area on Gmunder Straße. And what a! The restaurant actually consists of three parts: on the ground floor, a bar in a discreetly eclectic 1970s design, albeit without the bright colors of that time, a bar (not yet open) on the seventh floor, and at the top a roof garden, which by spring at the latest can also be used as a Terrace can be used for the restaurant. Vegetables and herbs that are already used in the kitchen are also grown there on 600 square meters.
The restaurant has a discreet, eclectic 1970s design.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
The Mural Farmhouse in Munich follows the principle of working with products from the region that are grown in the respective season or that have been preserved longer using traditional methods, such as fermentation. The only obvious exception is when it comes to wine. The young sommelier Maxime Joly, who celebrates his French accent admirably and knows how well it goes down, has currently mainly selected unusual organic and orange wines from the year 2020. You can experience the concept in the fine dining area of the restaurant in an exemplary way (there is also an à la carte department, which is open every evening except Monday). There is a menu with 16 to 18 courses from Tuesday to Friday (120 euros). Individual dishes from the menu can also be found on the menu of the day.
Head chef Rico Birndt has set himself the goal of showing the entire range of his cuisine in the menu as an example. It starts with an amazingly simple course consisting of a heart of romaine lettuce in ice water with grape and cherry verjuice. Once you have eaten the salad, you get a shot of gin in ice water and have the perfect aperitif. The starter salad is accompanied by a bouquet of herbs from our own harvest on the roof, some grated Scotch cheese on top, and another plate with kiwi from the foothills of the Alps (yes, they do exist!), gooseberries and elderberries.
Taste is a matter of time: This is where the fish matures.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
In general: lettuce, herbs, fruit and vegetables are the trumps in the farmhouse’s play of aromas. For example, dandelion capers are used, which taste almost like olives when fermented. Roasted leek with yeast and lovage is already one of the house classics because of its surprisingly intense taste. And the hit in the current autumn menu, as Sturm and his companion agreed, is a rich, creamy asparagus and potato stew, topped with wonderfully aromatic mountain cheese.
That’s not to say that meat and fish aren’t used in just as many ways in the farmhouse. The zander with its amazingly crispy skin and perfectly cooked, tender, elastic meat on beurre blanc with woodruff need not hide from any turbot from the Atlantic. The lake trout from the Schliersee, dry-aged for 21 days, becomes almost a Japanese noble sashimi with lemon verbena and miso. And the actually almost ordinary Simmental cow (this breed of cattle is the classic in Bavarian stables) is transformed into a South American mini grill skewer with wild garlic capers, chili and pimento and even into a sweet dessert with yeast and caramel.
Courses like this are of course a real highlight: when something that is all too familiar is suddenly interpreted and presented in a completely new way, releasing a variety of tastes that you would never have expected before. But sometimes you just enjoy it in silence and then say to yourself: Did I actually eat a course in this 120-euro menu that consisted only of a sandwich? Well, the bread came from Julius Brantner, without whom nothing seems to work in upscale Munich restaurants anymore, and the butter was inoculated with blue mold, which is actually an advanced spreadable cheese. As banal as that sounds, it gets to the heart of the farmhouse concept: if you are creative enough with the limitations, you can create great delicacies.
Mural FarmhouseHofmannstraße 45, 81379 Munich, telephone: 089/262089079, opening times: Tuesday to Sunday 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. (à la carte), menu starts Tuesday to Friday 6.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m. (fine dining)
The SZ taster
The restaurant review “Tasting” of Süddeutsche Zeitung has a long tradition: it has been published weekly in the local section since 1975 and online for several years. About a dozen editors with culinary expertise from all departments – from Munich, science to politics – take turns writing about the city’s gastronomy. The selection is endless, the Bavarian economy is just as important as the Greek fish restaurant, the American fast-food chain, the special bratwurst stand or the gourmet restaurant decorated with stars. The special thing about the SZ taster: The authors write under pseudonyms, often with a culinary touch. They go into the restaurant to be tested unnoticed about two or three times, depending on how long the budget given by the editors lasts. Iron basic rules: a grace period of one hundred days for the kitchen of a new restaurant to familiarize itself. And: never get caught working as a restaurant critic – to be able to describe food and drink, service and atmosphere impartially.