Sticky Fingers

Small plates under rock music

The plates move to the table for sharing, not ceremony. Anton Schmaus is executive chef at Sticky Fingers in Old Town, Regensburg, a restaurant built around contemporary fusion, cocktails and a room that keeps its volume up. He describes the cooking as being for everyone in the truest sense of the word, and the inclusiveness is legible on the card: bulgur kofta beside miso fried chicken beside smoked ricotta anolini. The evidence is the format itself, family-style small plates for the middle of the table, bold international flavour, and daily changing offers that keep the kitchen from settling. That movement meets a language comfortable with ponzu, sushi rice, spicy radish, ginger, miso, smoked ricotta, bulgur and anolini. The room does not behave like a hushed trophy case. It behaves like a bar that learned how to feed a table properly.

A table built for passing plates

The program turns on a simple piece of discipline: food arrives for the group, and the meal gains shape through sequence rather than possession. The house offers a 3-course Sticky Styled surprise menu for the whole table, with dessert as an optional extra, and a monthly 5-course Trust the Chef special that pushes the Sticky style further on a single Wednesday. The a la carte runs through small, shareable plates, with dishes cited from the room including flamed salmon with ponzu and ginger; miso fried chicken; smoked ricotta anolini; bulgur kofta; panzanella; paella; fish and chips; and Sticky's Breakfast with Imperial Caviar and a vodka shot. The method is less about purity than controlled collision. Acid, smoke, chile, rice, dairy and fried texture sit close together, and the pass has to keep each plate clear enough to survive the table. Cocktails carry equal weight in the room. Yuzu N, Tokyo Sundowner and Alarmed Bison sit in the drinking register of the place, with Michi and Basti named for the bar work.

The room keeps the tempo

The room at Untere Bachgasse 9 is dark, lively, and tuned closer to a club than a dining room built for lowered voices. Background music, including rock, is part of the material of the place; it changes how the pass is received, how plates are passed, and how long a table lingers over a cocktail before ordering again. Small round tables tighten the choreography. For couples, that can pull the meal inward; for groups, it asks the table to keep moving, hands crossing for salmon, chicken, anolini, another glass. In summer, a few terrace tables let the restaurant loosen its edge into the Old Town street, but the identity remains inside: fashionable, dark, social, and restless without becoming formal.

The discipline inside the noise

Sticky Fingers matters because it lets a historic Regensburg address hold a modern restaurant and bar without softening either side. The kitchen does not lean on a fixed signature dish, and the beverage program does not sit politely behind the food. The useful close-up is the table itself: plates in the middle, cocktails beside them, and the 5-course Trust the Chef special giving the pass a monthly frame at Sticky Fingers.