“I can cook the way I want. When I go to the market and see the produce, the idea is already there — by the time I’m back, I have a new recipe. That’s the freedom, and that’s what makes it special for me.”
Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, Founder & Head Chef, Le Faubourg
On a quiet street just east of the Isar, a few steps from Max-Weber-Platz, there is a small dining room where the menu changes almost every week and the chef still comes out of the kitchen to say hello. Le Faubourg — the name nods to the old faubourgs, the lived-in quarters that grew up just outside a city’s centre — has stood at Kirchenstraße 5 in Munich’s Haidhausen since 2001. For twenty-five years it has been run by one man wearing several hats at once: Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, born and trained in France, is the head chef, the buyer, the wine list, and the owner who signs the invoices.
It is exactly the kind of business that is getting harder to run in a big German city: a small, independent French kitchen holding its ground against system gastronomy and rising costs, on the strength of one operator’s taste and stamina. Among the practical decisions that keep it running is a quieter one most guests never see: three years ago Dominique moved part of his day-to-day finances onto the fintech platform Vivid.
“The patron is on holiday”
Le Faubourg did not begin with a business plan. Dominique came into the restaurant — then a French bistro under a patron named Pascal — and worked there before asking the owner a blunt question: would he sell? The answer, more or less, was you’ll manage. They worked side by side for a while, and after some persuading the owner simply handed him the keys. That was twenty-five years ago.
What followed was a crash course in running a room in a language he barely spoke. His German, by his own account, was catastrophic. The first customer he served had to wait the better part of an afternoon for the bill because he could not work the till. So he did what he could do: he cooked, he washed up, he did whatever the night demanded, and he kept the previous owner’s ghost alive for the regulars who hadn’t caught on yet.
“When the old regulars came in and asked, ‘Where is Pascal?’, I always said the patron was on holiday. I never said I was the patron. I just kept going, on and on.”
Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, Founder & Head Chef, Le Faubourg
The freedom to change the menu on the way home
Ask Dominique what makes the food his, and he doesn’t reach for a signature dish. He reaches for the market. French cooking is, in his word, his adrenaline — the thing he was raised on, trained in, and then pressure-tested for the better part of a decade in three-star kitchens before he ever ran his own.
“French cooking is my adrenaline. I was born in France, I trained in France at a proper school, and I spent almost ten years in three-star kitchens.”
Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, Founder & Head Chef, Le Faubourg
The result is a French kitchen with the borders left slightly open. A fish might arrive with ponzu, an Asian broth lifted with citron and a touch of orange; winter still means a bœuf bourguignon or a coq au vin, but done with a little spin. The card stays deliberately short and turns over a dish or two most weeks, and a good part of it is vegetarian. Underneath the invention sits a plain rule about where quality comes from: buy well, and there is not much left to get wrong. As he puts it, borrowing a French line, you can’t turn a nag into a racehorse.
Chef and entrepreneur, at the same time
Behind the cooking is a business that has to survive Munich. Rents are not cheap; energy, gas and groceries have all climbed; and a small restaurant carries the cost of every one of those lines. The discipline, Dominique says, is pricing the room so a guest leaves feeling it was worth it — not a cheap restaurant, but not a dear one either — and never losing sight of the numbers, because the day you do is the day it ends. That means good people around him, and a good tax adviser.
It also means knowing what he is not. He is a strong cook and, cheerfully, a poor bookkeeper, and he has no illusions about doing everything himself.
“I can cook well, but I’m a bad bookkeeper. I can’t build a wall or renovate a room. So I bring in people who take that off my hands. You simply have to delegate well.”
Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, Founder & Head Chef, Le Faubourg
Why people keep coming back
Some of Dominique’s guests have been coming for more than twenty years. He has watched them arrive on first dates, then with children, and now the children arrive with partners of their own — a changing of the generations that, he admits with a smile, reminds him he isn’t getting any younger. There are anniversaries to mark and, on the fourteenth of July, concerts for Bastille Day.
Part of the loyalty is the food, and part of it is a way of running a room that treats hospitality as the first course. Dominique is in his kitchen most of the night, but he comes out — to the regulars, to the table that asked for him, to whoever wants a word. The talent grows the same way. Janis, who now works the service, first ate here as a seven-year-old with his parents and grandmother; he trained at the Paul Bocuse school in Lyon, came for a short apprenticeship, and asked to stay.
“We’re a small place, and small places keep getting rarer. In Munich you’re up against system gastronomy, against very large companies. But a little French bistro, like the ones in Lyon where I come from — that’s easy for people. Still very human.”
Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, Founder & Head Chef, Le Faubourg
The account behind the counter
Almost every guest at Le Faubourg now pays by card — by Dominique’s estimate, ninety-five percent and more. That single fact is what led him to Vivid. He wanted a second account, separate from the traditional Sparkasse the business had used for years, to keep the card takings cleanly apart from the rest. He looked online, came across Vivid’s Business Account, checked that it was reputable, and tried it. Three years on, he is still there.
What he values is not a feature list; it is the absence of friction. Opening the account was straightforward, and so is running it from the app. The takings from a night’s service land on the account by the next day, dependably and at more or less the same hour — the kind of predictability a cash-flow-tight kitchen actually feels. He uses it for the daily transfers and supplier payments that keep the restaurant supplied, and once or twice has parked spare liquidity in the Interest Account. It works so plainly that he opened a personal Vivid account too.
“Opening the account was uncomplicated, and Vivid’s app is just as uncomplicated. The money a guest pays is on the Vivid account by the next day, almost always at the same time. You can rely on it.”
Dominique Bas Dit Nugues, Founder & Head Chef, Le Faubourg
For an operator who would rather be at the market than at a spreadsheet, that is the whole point. What he likes most, he says, is simply how it works — you can do everything with one finger — and he recommends it for any business.
It is late, and the dining room is still full. Somewhere between the pass and the tables, Dominique is moving through the room, stopping to talk. The kitchen door, as ever, is open; the regulars can see straight in. Nothing here, he likes to say, is hidden.
Note: This article reflects the individual experience of a Vivid customer and is provided for general information only. It is not legal, financial, investment or tax advice, and is not a guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of capital, and the value of investments can go down as well as up. Product availability, rates and conditions depend on your plan and may change. Information is current as of August 2026. Please seek advice from a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
