Casele began with a Sunday walk. Raffaele Colonna – the restaurant’s German-Italian owner, chef, host and sommelier – was strolling through Glockenbach, one of Munich's more colourful neighbourhoods: dense with independent addresses, shaped by a long queer history along Müllerstraße, and the kind of place where a culturally alert crowd still does its own grocery shopping. He chanced upon a vacant shop on the street: the former Schlagbauer, a family butcher that had anchored the neighbourhood for 75 years before closing in March 2024. Colonna recognised its potential immediately.
Wallpaper* dines at Casele, Munich
The mood: A mash-up of mahogany and British racing green
Casele – short for Casa di Raffaele – is what followed: a southern Italian restaurant and bar with no interest in diluting its provenance for its postcode. Somewhat quixotically, diners enter through the bustling kitchen and into a courtyard festooned with the hanging laundry of the building’s residents above. One half expects a young Sofia Loren to lean out over a balcony crooning a saucy ditty, which is the point. ‘It does not read like a branded restaurant concept,’ says Colonna, ‘but more like an extension of its host – personal, informal, a little idiosyncratic.’
Local design studio, Holzrausch – founded by Tobias Petri and Sven Petzold – worked with Colonna to keep the butcher’s shop skeleton intact. ‘Instead of smoothing the past away,’ says Petri, ‘we kept the old counter, the cooling rooms and the logic of the place alive.’
Around that armature are layers of coffered timber ceilings, pale glazed wall tiles, dark green stone at the bar, stainless-steel elements and brass lighting. Velvet banquettes in British racing green – a nod to Colonna’s love of classic cars – sit alongside blush-toned upholstered chairs and vintage pieces. One room goes further still: a boardroom from a large Munich insurance company was rebuilt on a one-to-one scale inside the restaurant, giving that corner of Casele a strangely intact, almost cinematic second life.
Art circulates rather than decorates: mirror works by Alexander Deubl and lighting pieces by OHA here, mixed-media works by Stefanie Seethaler and flash photographs by Dylan Don there. ‘The logic is intuitive rather than formal,’ says Petri of the curation. ‘Whatever feels stranger, sharper or less expected than the obvious choice.’
The food: Naples by way of a Glockenbach butcher’s shop
Channelling Colonna’s own heritage, the menu is unapologetically southern Italian: fried octopus with chickpeas and Sicilian capers; aubergine involtini with Provolone DOP and San Marzano tomato; Paccheri Genovese with beef shank and eight-hour onions. ‘My cooking is built on product and memory,’ he says, ‘but handled with enough precision to keep it from turning nostalgic.’
The wine list – Ferrari Perlé 2018, Antinori Tignanello 2022, Gaja Barbaresco 2012, several vintages of Sassicaia – reflects years of nurtured relationships with producers, estates visited, and long evenings with the growers behind the bottles. At the bar, the cocktail programme is as idiosyncratic as the interior. ‘Guests can simply say what they feel like drinking,’ says Colonna, ‘and have something mixed around that.’
Casele – Cucina e Bar del Sud is located at Müllerstrasse 25, 80469 Munich, Germany; Reservations essential; the dining room is currently booked three to four months ahead. Walk-ins welcome at the bar.