Hullis Dinnershow

A tent maker who decided to fill his own tent

Hullis — billed as Comedy. Dinner. Show. — began as the project of Richard Matthes, owner of the Bavarian marquee firm Bavaria Zelte. Rather than hire out another mirror tent, Matthes had one designed to his own specification, in the manner of a 1920s spiegelzelt: hand-worked wood inlays, deep red velvet drapes, mirrored walls, candles in holders on the tables, and a column-free sightline to the stage from every seat. He then needed a show to put in it, and brought in Sven Pawlitschko, a director with a long back catalogue of German dinner shows, as artistic director.

The tent opened on the eastern Munich exhibition grounds, off the De-Gasperi-Bogen at Gate 10, on 30 October 2025, with the gala premiere following on 6 November. Around 500 guests were in that night, among them Roberto Blanco, who closed the evening with his signature song, Patrick Lindner and Jule Ronstedt. Alfons Schuhbeck sent a recorded message of congratulation — reported at the time as his first public word since his criminal proceedings. Pawlitschko's line afterwards was that they had set up a distinct brand among Munich dinner shows built on quality, emotional depth and surprising storytelling; Matthes framed it as a tribute to nerve and to actually building the thing.

The first run was planned for more than 70 nights, finishing on 14 February 2026, with the tent seating somewhere between 500 and 600 depending on configuration.

The kitchen is one of the acts

What separates Hullis from a variety bill with catering attached is how tightly the food is written into the running order. The evening alternates five show blocks with four courses, and the handover between the two is cued to the second, which means the kitchen and the stage management work off the same clock all night.

Season one's menu came from Mario Gamba of the Michelin-starred Acquarello in Munich, developed with the catering operation that plates it. The dishes reported from the opening run included a minestrone a la cremoso with truffle tortellini and parmesan foam, a rose-petal couscous with smoked lake char and a chive-and-mint cream, veal fillet wrapped in tramezzini, and a soufflé served with iced Kaiserschmarrn and marinated berries. Every menu is built in meat, fish and plant-based versions, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free variants and reduced portions for children; allergies are taken in advance by email.

Gamba has been blunt about the brief in interviews: he refuses the fine-dining label for this, and describes the job as hitting a flavour that gives people pleasure without requiring an explanation at the table. The constraint is scale. Roughly 500 covers a night go out in step with the show, and holding the same standard across all of them is the real engineering problem.

Season two: a new chef and a new site

The second season runs from 29 October 2026 to 20 February 2027, and the official site places the mirror tent at Motorworld München. There are 63 dates on sale across that run.

The headline change is in the kitchen. Gamba hands over to Bobby Bräuer, who ran EssZimmer in BMW Welt as head chef from February 2013 and took it to two Michelin stars in November 2014. Bräuer announced in September 2024 that he would leave at the end of that year, and has worked independently on his own events since the start of 2025; Hullis is one of the larger things he has attached his name to since. His menu for the show is again four courses, offered in three variations.

Pricing starts at €119 for the upper-tier Rang seating, €159 for the loge boxes, €189 for the Manege ring seats and €199 for the entertainment tables set between the band and the stage. Every ticket covers the four courses, admission, cloakroom and parking. New Year's Eve is sold separately as a Silvester gala: six courses, an extended bill with an added headline act, champagne, and dancing to the house band until around three in the morning.

Who is actually on the bill

The 2026/27 company is largely new. Comedy is carried by the Brazilian clown Rafael Senna as Muzzarela, Torben Frey as Bruno, Saverio Abate's chef-de-cuisine character Camilo, Bay Yordan as an overwrought restaurant manager, the Ukrainian clown duo DoZaDo, and the two-hander Strange Comedy. Marion Pletz hosts as Anna Lyse, with Marenka Leins working the room as Big Mama.

The circus half of the programme is drawn from the international variety circuit: Daniel Stern on straps, Alexandr Batuev's contortion and Chinese pole work, Sebastian and Flurina, the hoop-diving troupe Ring Rebels, the springboard acrobats The Gents, Alexandra Malter on hula hoop, Alexander Abadilla on rola-bola, the handstand trio Konjowochu, Burl the Bubble Guy, and the crossed-wheel duo 2-Zen-O, who were one of the most talked-about turns of the opening run. Iryna Bilenka-Chaplin provides sand art, a discipline the first season also used, with Natalya Netselya in the role.

Music is live throughout, with no backing tracks: a six-piece band billed as The Treats, fronted by the Austrian singer Angelika Erlacher. Season one's bill also included the bird magician Sergey Stupakov, whose act drew a disproportionate share of the audience reviews.

Standing

For a show one season old, the reception has been unusually consistent. Aggregated Google ratings sit at 4.9 out of 5 across 469 reviews, with 450 of those at five stars and a single one-star; the smaller Tripadvisor listing sits at 5.0. The recurring notes are the closeness of the artists to the tables, the service, and the food being treated as an event rather than a filler between acts.

The trade and local press coverage of the premiere was warm without being useful as criticism — most of it was written from the gala night. The one piece that registered reservations put it as the usual premiere roughness around the edges, against a concept it judged to have landed on ambition, elegance and the range of the acts. There is no independent review yet of Bräuer's menu or the reshuffled 2026/27 company, which is the open question going into the second season.