Mural Farmhouse

An ambitious F&B concept at Locke’s new Munich outpost brings an approachability to fine dining and emphasises the importance of eating local.

Words: Guy Dittrich Photography: © Edmund Dabney (unless otherwise stated)

The rooftop of WunderLocke in Munich’s lively Sendling neighbourhood boasts views of the snow-capped peaks of the Bavarian Alps, which, come summertime, will make a theatrical backdrop for enjoying light bites and aperitifs at a pop-up bar. Amongst the dining tables and lounge seating, raised beds are abundant with plant life that serves as the kitchen garden – a telling hint as to the F&B ethos that prevails within.

Flying collectively under the name Mural Farmhouse, WunderLocke’s F&B offering comprises five venues set across seven floors, spanning an all-day à la carte restaurant, a café, bar, rooftop and – in an ambitious move for the hotel – a fine-dining venue with a tasting menu. The philosophy behind the concept is quite literally written on the walls, with bold graffiti-style writing – courtesy of the artist Stohead – revealing the phrase ‘Eat Local. Drink Natural.’

“Our eat local, drink natural ethos underpins everything we do at Mural Farmhouse,” explains WunderLocke’s Head Chef Rico Birndt. “By approaching the project through the lens of sustainability, we challenged ourselves to experiment with new cooking methods that celebrate seasonality in its purest form.”

The circularity of the hotel’s culinary sphere is also seen in other elements of the project; notably the re-purposing of the concrete structure of a former Siemens office building

© Lenka Li Lilling

© Lenka Li Lilling

Mural Farmhouse’s ingredients are all sourced from within the region, with ‘eat local’ an important part of the culinary narrative

and the approach to the interiors taken by Londonbased studio, Holloway Li. “Our design incorporates a series of biophilic inserts,” explains Co-Founder and Creative Director Alex Holloway. “Dense freeflowing planting and natural materials such as timber, terrazzo and raffia provide a natural counterpoint to the omnipresence of concrete.”

In the fine-dining restaurant, where floor-toceiling windows look out to a sunken garden terrace complete with plunge pool, furniture is crafted from large-format terrazzo and timber, while mirrored ceiling panels ripple like the wind on water. Sitting lightly on the existing building, the design allows for flexibility of configuration. The adjacent café-bar doubles as an extensive lounge and co-working space, whilst upstairs is a perfectly-sized, moody cocktail bar with plush velvet and plump leather upholstery.

WunderLocke, which opened its doors in the summer of 2022, is the largest of Locke’s 12 hotels to date, and the brand’s second outpost in Munich. The Mural Farmhouse concept follows a successful collaboration with Moritz Meyn and Wolfgang Hingerl – the masterminds behind the city’s hip Michelinstarred restaurant Mural – on the Bambule! bar at sister hotel, Schwan Locke, just a few kilometres away. “After working with Mural to create Bambule! we knew they were the perfect partners to create a distinctive offering at WunderLocke,” says Eric Jafari, Chief Development Officer and Creative Director of WunderLocke’s parent company Edyn.

As the name suggests, Mural Farmhouse’s ingredients are sourced from various farms across the region. Martin and Charlotte at the nearby Hand & Erde supply vegetables. “It is a 30-minute drive each week to collect our vegetables as they are too small to make deliveries,” says Jan Maetzing, F&B Manager of all the hotel’s venues. That they have been invited to dinner gives a good indication of the level of supplier relationships. Flour and eggs come from Billesberger Hof, an organic farm half an hour away, and the fresh milk and butter from the dairy farm Alztaler Molkerei, near the Austrian border. Organic bakeries Wagner and Julius Brantner, in the nearby neighbourhood of Schwabing, supply pastries and sourdough bread respectively; the fish is from Schliersee, a picturesque lake some 50km south; and meat is sourced from Gutshof Polting, a fifth-generation farming business that supplies the city with the best lamb – though mostly Mural Farmhouse takes meat from wild, freerange animals that Polting hunt themselves.

“We are very strict about the local sourcing,” explains Maetzing, pointing out how useful the rooftop garden has been this first summer. Strawberries, lemon verbena, salads and herbs have all been plentiful – and there are plans to add bees into the mix this spring. Forbidden items include exotic fruits: no mango, berries or even bananas featured in Supper’s early winter breakfast fruit selection, underlining the commitment to seasonal offerings.

A little more freedom has been allowed when it comes to the wine list. “We are international with our wine but all of it is organic and mostly natural,” explains Maetzing. In the fine-dining restaurant, all nine pairings accompanying the 12-course menu come from Europe: earthy wines including a champagne from the eight-hectare Benoit Marguet estate, and some whites with hints of orange.

Alcohol-free pairing alternatives are practically a baseline requirement these days, so the team has developed a range of homemade kefirs and kombuchas for non-drinkers. Unusually, the kefirs are water-based, making their fruity-herby profile

© Lenka Li Lilling

Harvest from the rooftop garden includes strawberries, lemon verbena and herbs, which are used in an array of dishes

both refreshing and longer-lasting than milk alternatives. The tea-based fermentation of the kombuchas provides a tannin-like taste that is more suitable as a replacement for red wines.

The results of these fermentation and pickling techniques are proudly stacked on the top shelf of Mural Farmhouse’s bar, where huge glass jars of beets, cabbage, pears, rhubarb, verbena and asparagus adorn the wall. The approach is a welcome and pragmatic extension of the always-too-short spring asparagus ‘spargel saison’ for which Bavaria is famous.

During Supper’s dinner, seasonal items on the winter fine-dining menu included a fantastic amuse bouche triptych created to look like a posy and good enough to wear on a lapel, featuring five different types of delicate cabbage leaf served with a creamy blue cheese sauce. There was a mouthful of crunchy, charred salsify topped with a smoked cheese, alongside a soup combining the juice of roasted mushrooms and oil of black peppercorns served in a white bowl from the Base series by Piet Boon for Serax.

Supplementing the back-to-basics ideas of preservation are three, glass-fronted dry-ageing fridges, their picture windows full of hanging cuts of meat, carcasses of fish and venison, salamis, root vegetables and, for the winter, a whole dryer full of goose – all of which form part of Birndt’s broader view on sustainability. He waves to the dryers, explaining: “By ageing the produce under stable conditions, it allows strong flavours to develop.” The fish bones are reduced and then fermented for three months at 60°C to make a fish garum, while the meat stripped from carcasses is for the homemade salami, demonstrating a truly nose-to-tail approach of reduced waste and great flavours. Vegetables, too, are aged: mushrooms dried for six months taste like chocolate, while certain radishes give the intense flavour of smoked bacon and red beets take on the chewy consistency of ham.

Moving through the fine-dining menu, a dried wild boar fillet is served, its tangy softness contrasting with a crusty sourdough bread and

blue cheese and butter mix, itself stored for two months to develop a powerful flavour (a carpaccio of the same boar sees its way on to the à la carte menu in the all-day restaurant). A light and mineral Riesling Kabinett Röttgen from Mosel Valley counters the richness. A section of crispy-skinned, soft-fleshed pike perch is served with a beurre blanc with fish garum, balanced out by the nutty, yeasty taste of a Claus Preisinger KalkundKiesel pinot blanc from Austria.

In general there is a pureness to the extensive menu, which features small but hearty portions. It’s wholesome – like a “morning muesli” as Maetzing describes the cubed asparagus and liquified blue cheese topped with a roasted potato crunch. “Mix it all up!” he enthuses. Meticulously prepared, the ingredients are beautifully but simply presented; at Mural Farmhouse, it’s all about the tastes, the consistencies and the textural contrasts.

How do Meyn and Hingerl see their concept playing out at WunderLocke? “We have had the idea for a unique gastronomic concept like Mural Farmhouse for a long time,” says Meyn. “From breakfast through to the relaxed finedining menu, we wanted to provide guests with a unique culinary experience. With partners like Edyn this vision was able to be realised as they were just as enthusiastic about this perfect match between a unique hotel and a top gastronomy offering which is open to all guests and pays equal attention to the visual delight as well as the quality.”

Locke has positioned itself as a lifestyle brand, with its portfolio of aparthotels reflecting its ‘made to be lived in’ slogan, and the ambition to ally the Mural brand to its latest designconscious but nevertheless neighbourhood Munich property says much about a city where fine-dining options can thrive in non A-list locations. The Mural Farmhouse takes its cue from this inclusivity, offering a local connection and a relaxed informality that feels much more down to earth than the haute cuisine often found in the hushed, white-gloved arena. IN A BITE Operator: Edyn F&B Team: Mural Interior Design: Holloway Li Head Chef: Rico Birndt F&B Manager: Jan Maetzing Head Sommelier: Wolfgang Hingerl, Maxime Joly muralfarmhouse.de