Where to celebrate Valentine's Day
I don’t expect a dozen red roses on my pillow, or a cheesy card. Silk lingerie would be nice, but the quickest way to my heart is definitely through my stomach. And, come Valentine’s Day, or any day for that matter, I’m a sucker for a glass of champagne, a bit of old-fashioned charm and a slap-up candlelit dinner. So, in the name of duty, I dragged my man along to find the best restaurants in Munich for a cozy tête-à- tête. How he suffers...
If you like in-your-face glamor and romance, Monkey Room is the place to go. It’s dark, a bit sultry and there are plenty of lush red velvet drapes. You wouldn’t be out of place here wearing fishnets and a boa. A bit ooh là là, perhaps, but fun, all the same. Indeed, there’s a certain Frenchness to the place—never a bad thing when you’re after luuurve—the waiter had a petit twinge in his accent and the food has definite Gallic influences. Diners choose from one of four set meals, costing around the € 30 mark. I started with a carpaccio, which was only slightly spoiled, to my mind, by a creamy dressing rather than the classic of oil and vinegar. This was followed by a juicy piece of salmon with squidgy cherry tomatoes on tagliatelle for me—food you can tease with a fork alone is always the sexiest—and a slab of fillet steak for my man. I realize steak is not a classic aphrodisiac, but the meat was so flavorsome that the fact that he was prepared to spare me some of it was a serious act of love. Keep your oysters—this was the real thing. Dessert was a choice of crème brûlée or mousse au chocolat. No stodgy stuff—just delicate, tongue-teasing afters. Delicious. All I needed now was for Ewan MacGregor to appear and burst into a rendition of the Elephant Love Song from Moulin Rouge... Amalienstrasse 38, Tel. 28 80 60 29.
If you prefer something slightly less brash, check out Weinkehr. Located in a cellar under Briennerstrasse, this stylish Austrian restaurant may be a touch more formal, with white table cloths and stiff-backed chairs, but it certainly doesn’t lack intimacy. In fact, you’ll need to speak in whispers to avoid your sweet nothings being carried via the domed roof to the other side of the restaurant. There again, you’ll probably be too busy enjoying the food—and drink—to talk. Yes, although there’s only a small selection of food, there are three bumper wine lists—one for red, one for white and one for wines by the glass. All wines are Austrian and are fairly priced at around € 20 a bottle. There is also a range of five-liter bottles available, although this is unlikely to be particularly condusive to postprandial passion. The food, on the other hand, is presented in entirely manageable portions. For starters, we chose the venison salami with a celeriac salad and a veal carpaccio with pumpkin-seed dressing. Though neither were what I would describe as spectacular, it was refreshing to be presented with something that was merely simple and tasty. The mains, too, were simply prepared—no fuss, no frills, just high-quality ingredients, cooked well. In fact, you get the impression that, as the restaurant’s name suggests, it’s the wines that are the showstoppers here. We chose from a selection of Zweigelts and were extremely impressed by the mellow flavors and smoothness of our drink. An aperitif of Austrian Sekt and herbal syrup, as well as a sweet Ortega wine with dessert, were equally good. Of course, no romantic meal would be complete without some sort of food for sharing—and the great cheese platter, for just € 8, fitted the bill perfectly. As we finished off the wine, we nibbled on Austrian equivalents of Parmesan, Emmental, Brie and other cheeses, as well as walnuts, grapes and pumpkin seeds, oblivious to everything around us. And that’s possibly what makes Weinkehr such a great choice for a romantic meal—the food, drink and service all appear to happen so effortlessly that you can forget about wondering when on earth you’re going to be served and lose yourself in each other. Gush. Briennerstrasse 23, Tel. 512 66 28 58 96.
When we paid a visit to Amalon, we had no choice but to lose ourselves in each other—we were the only people there. No other diners, no service staff, no maître d’. But a situation that initially felt a little odd, soon struck us as being fairly privileged—after all, the owner was prepared to keep the place open, run about after us and knock up what turned out to be a first-rate meal, just for the two of us. I can’t promise you’ll get the same treatment. Once word gets round that Amalon is a pretty good restaurant, Detlef Gentgen is not going to have a lot of time on his hands for small talk. Yet you still get the feeling he’ll be striving to maintain the personal touch, preparing dishes from fresh, to diners’ orders. Prices are reasonable—we paid € 40 for a celeriac and truffle soup, St. Jacques scallops on a julienne of vegetables, a veal chop with a walnut and Gorgonzola crust, served with tagliatelle and romanesco and drinks. All three of those dishes could potentially have been a disaster. It would have been easy to overdo it with the truffle oil, the scallops could have been overcooked and rubbery, the Gorgonzola could have been overpowering and too heavy and the pasta and veg could have been overcooked. But they weren’t. Despite doing the lot himself, Gentgen managed to keep it all under control. We did wonder how he’d cope if a party of 12 suddenly walked in, but he assured us he could. Although he runs the place single-handedly on quiet nights, come the end of the week, Gentgen does call in service staff. Someone whose help he could use is an interior designer. The place looks like the inside of many a ready-furnished, Neubau apartment, from the furniture to the picture on the wall. As for the crockery, I initially thought Gentgen had spilled soup all over one, until I noticed that the nondescript beige splatter was part of the design. Nitpicking it may be, but when you’re trying to make it in an area like the Glockenbachviertel, where there’s no shortage of stylish competition, these things play a bigger part than you might imagine. Go, gaze into your loved one’s eyes—and ignore the décor. Holzstrasse 16, Tel. 23 22 58 40.
