Sept. 18--Summer is over. Feel the hurt, and let it go.
As farmers markets and menus alike segue from heirloom tomatoes and fresh berries to acorn squash and root vegetables, it's a good time to check out Chicago's German dining options.
Hearty German dishes -- sturdy sausages, carby pretzels, meaty schnitzels -- are perfect for this time of year. And, of course, we're in the middle of Chicago's various celebrations of Oktoberfest, the annual party that has been a German tradition since 1810. (Munich's Oktoberfest celebration is taking place as you read this.)
At one time, Chicago's German dining scene included names such as Heidelberger Fass, Zum Deutschen Eck and Golden Ox. Those are gone, and another mainstay, Mirabell, announced in April that it would close, though it continues to operate, with a limited menu, on weekends.
The Berghoff survives, though it's a bit smaller than it was in its heyday, and plenty of others remain as well, as our handy little roundup demonstrates:
The Radler
The most serious German food in Chicago can be found in the city's youngest German restaurant: The Radler, which opened nearly two years ago in Logan Square. Owned by Adam Hebert and chef Nathan Sears, both veterans of Paul Virant's Vie, The Radler is everything German food should be -- seasonal, local and delicious.
"At Vie, I was curing and smoking and making preserves," Sears says. "Everything (German food) does is everything I love. No reason why it can't be exceptional."
You'll pay a bit more than at other German spots to dine at The Radler -- some entrees creep into the mid-$20s, gasp -- and it will be worth it. For instance, Hebert and Sears went through 12 recipes before settling on one for their soft pretzel, an item that should be part of every visit here. It's a beauty, soft and chewy, served with barley-malt butter and blackberry jam -- more traditionally authentic, Sears says, than the ubiquitous mustard and spreadable cheese. If it's mustard you want, you can add a trio -- beer, spicy and smoky versions, all house-made -- for $2.
The charcuterie plate comes with your choice of two house-made meats for $15 ($5 per additional pick). The haus pate, pure pork with caramelized onions, is a fine choice, as is the Thuringer, a bratwurstlike sausage topped with puffed wild rice and tomato jam. The pickles and pickled eggs are nice accompaniments; the steamed rye bread is an exceptional one. Among entrees, the pork loin schnitzel with blueberry mustard, rainbow chard and black-eyed peas might be the best schnitzel I've ever had. And I love the smoked brisket sandwich, essentially a Reuben with a protein switcheroo.
The open dining room is a nice mix of beer-hall chic (long wood tables and benches, old-timey-looking clocks behind the bar) and modern (exposed ductwork, abstract art, a room screen made of fused bicycle parts). All the way in back, with a separate entrance, is DAS, an informal, late-night hangout specializing in skewered doner kebabs (chicken, pork, mushroom) for an exceedingly modest $8. 2375 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-276-0270, www.dasradler.com. Dinner Tuesday to Sunday, brunch Saturday and Sunday.
-- Phil Vettel
Prost!
In appearance, Lincoln Park's Prost! is part beer hall, part sports bar. Walls have dark-wood wainscoting and plenty of TVs; no matter which long, bench-seat table you pick, you'll have a good view of whatever game is on display. In terms of menu, Prost is a mashup of Germany and Wisconsin.
Start with the pretzel, available in full and half portions. Be advised that the half-pretzel will feed three and arrives at the table on a wooden baker's peel. Add some beer cheese, served in a white ramekin, and you're two radishes shy of a relish tray. The cheese is mighty tasty, a nice balance to the sweeter-than-most pretzel.
Lurking among the appetizers are chicken wings, cheese nachos, sliders and beer-battered Wisconsin cheese curds, but you'll also find pierogi, potato pancakes and "cheesy spaetzel," a play on mac 'n' cheese that arrives scalding-hot from the kitchen. Entree specials include various schnitzels and Hungarian goulash, $17 or less each. 2566 N. Lincoln Ave., 773-880-9900, www.prostchicago.com. Lunch and dinner daily.
-- P.V.
Laschet's Inn
This North Center neighborhood tavern is a companionable place that retains something of a '70s vibe today in both food and decor.
The menu is a mix of German and American items, so you'll find herring and jalapeno poppers, onion rings and bratwurst, schnitzels and shrimp De Jonghe. Beer is prominently featured on the drinks menu, as you might expect, with seasonal specials. Meals are capped with complimentary shots of schnapps that, honestly, could serve as dessert if you're full. And you likely will be stuffed. Portions are big.
Start with the sampler plate of grilled bratwurst, knackwurst and Thuringer sausage. The sliced links, arranged around a mound of sauerkraut, are juicy and well-seasoned but I wished for a little mustard on the side. (The sausages are also available as dinner entrees.) Also try Laschet's liver pate, two small scoops of a fluffy, meaty spread paired with sliced hard-cooked eggs, pickles, onions and what look like Ritz-brand crackers.
For entrees, the Rouladen is in the spirit of German cooking but not an obvious pick. It's described on the menu as "tenderized beef rolled with mustard, bacon, pickle and onion dressed in dark gravy." The beef is indeed tender, and the smoky stuffing is nicely tangy, but the "dark gravy" is a basic brown. The dish comes with lightly sauteed spaetzle and a meltingly soft mound of red cabbage.
Leberkase, a sauteed veal loaf steak topped with a fried egg, looks like ham and eggs but the porky taste is subtler. The egg adds a nice richness. Entrees come with choice of soup or a cucumber or three-bean pineapple salad. This night's soup, One night, the soup was a cream of carrot, and it was rich, creamy and full of carrot flavor. Delicious.
The tavern wears its history well, especially in the front bar area where guests can dine and drink amid framed photos, artworks and mugs hanging decoratively from the beams above. 2119 W. Irving Park Road, 773-478-7915, www.laschetsinn.com. Open daily, starting at 2 p.m. weekdays; kitchen closed Monday.
-- Bill Daley
Resi's Bierstube
You could call this place Resi's Biergarten, for while it's a cozy, neighborly beer hall with many selections of brew, Resi's Bierstube in North Center has a remarkable beer garden out back with a tall maple tree (a second maple tree is gone now, its stump serves as an umbrella stand), a cluster of patio umbrellas, flower boxes abloom and lots of patio tables. Our friendly server tells us Resi's has the oldest beer garden in Chicago. It certainly has to be among the prettiest.
The dinner menu doesn't list starters, but you can wing it as I did by ordering the knackwurst a la carte and pairing it with Resi's signature potato pancakes -- thick, crusty, golden and satisfying, especially with a spoonful of the accompanying apple sauce or sour cream. The knackwurst are juicy inside their taut casings, and I appreciate the mustard and grated horseradish served on the side. The schnitzel a la Holstein is classically presented: pork pounded uniformly thin, breaded and sauteed, topped with two fried eggs and anchovies.
Cincinnati chili doesn't seem particularly German, but Resi's takes on a little Teutonic tone by being spooned atop a mound of spaetzle and garnished with grated cheese and chopped onion. I love the idea -- how fun, right? -- and the squiggly spaetzle shapes give the chili a nice textural spark.
Fall is approaching fast, and there will be a day when the beer garden is just too cold. Don't worry. The barroom looks comfortable enough. The tables and chairs are utilitarian but the wood-paneled atmosphere seems laid-back and local. There's plenty of art and memorabilia to look at -- including, oddly enough, a mirrored disco ball on the ceiling. 2034 W. Irving Park Road, 773-472-1749, www.resisbierstube.com. Dinner daily; lunch Friday to Sunday.
-- B.D.
Hofbrauhaus Chicago
It's a restaurant of nonstop superlatives. Certainly Hofbrauhaus Chicago is the largest German beer hall around town -- maybe even the Central time zone? -- at 26,000 square feet with seating for 1,000 during Oktoberfest, due to the addition of a tented outdoor dining room. Count on it also being the most raucous, ostentatious, loudest, with the highest count of female servers in alpine frocks, and the most "zicke zacke zicke zacke hoi hoi hoi!" toasts per hour.
The Rosemont restaurant opened in January 2013, but its lineage dates back to the Hofbrauhaus am Platzl beer hall built in 1589 in Munich. Today Hofbrauhaus is a certifiable brand, where you can purchase gaudy Bavarian felt hats in the gift shop, or throw back one of five house-brewed beers in ceramic steins.
A restaurant of such considerable size means the kitchen must operate with, dare I say, German-level precision. Even in the midst of Oktoberfest celebrations on a Saturday night, our food and drinks came out at a brisk pace -- buttery crisp veal schnitzel, a sausage platter that included delightfully snappy frankfurters, and a fantastic pork shank with the crunchiest rind this side of a carniceria.
Approached with the proper mindset, Hofbrauhaus is legitimately fun for young and old; I saw four boys in Bayern Munich jerseys dancing feverishly to the live oompah band. It's a bit Epcot Center-ish in the grandness of scale, and your neighbors on the communal bench might hop on the table and stomp feet to "Roll Out the Barrel." This is why, I suppose, they serve hefeweizen in glass boots. For social lubrication. 5500 Park Place (inside MB Financial Park), Rosemont, 847-671-2739, www.hofbrauhauschicago.com. Dinner daily, lunch Saturday and Sunday.
-- Kevin Pang
Berghoff
You could head to the historic Berghoff, eyeball the photos, stained glass and plates piled high with German eats, then go straight to the bar (originally a men-only saloon, by the way, that opened to women in the late 1960s) for a stein of Berghoff beer.
Or you could do this restaurant right, sit down at a table, order a stein and tuck into a plate of sausages, schnitzel, sauerbraten or Spinatknodel. Wait, spinat what?
Since Herman Berghoff opened the place in 1898, the Berghoff family, which still runs the restaurant, has evolved with the times. So besides German classics, pork shanks, ox joints and duck, you'll find items such as the Spinatknodel: fried spinach-bread-sun-dried-tomato dumplings served with a Parmesan-garnished quinoa and arugula salad.
But it's Oktoberfest, so here are some better suggestions: Opt for a mini brat and knockwurst (knackwurst) appetizer. Roughly 2-inch chunks of the links (the knockwurst has a great snap; the brat is beautifully mild) nestle on tender buns under a sauerkraut blanket. Also on the plate? A bacon-studded, lightly tangy German potato salad and Dusseldorf mustard.
Choose a schnitzel from the five variations on this crisp-coated, pounded-thin cutlet of meat, including Rahm schnitzel, which has nothing to do with Chicago's mayor, but rather refers to the dish's mushroom-cream sauce. Our Wiener schnitzel, its golden coat covering an almost-plate-sized piece of veal, arrived with green vegetables, dill pickle chunks, lemon wedges and fried potatoes. For something comforting, the sauerbraten fills the bill, with tender slices of beef sharing plate space with a mountain of buttery mashed potatoes. Classic sweet-sour gravy bathes both.
There are several desserts (apple strudel, Black Forest cake, etc.), but an adult root beer float made with Berghoff's new Rowdy Root Beer (6.6 percent alcohol by volume) might be the perfect finish. 17 W. Adams St., Chicago, 312-427-3170, www.theberghoff.com. Lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday.
-- Judy Hevrdejs
Edelweiss
You've got to love a restaurant that displays ornate lidded beer steins as tall as a toddler, sells a beer-stein emblazoned T-shirt that reads "Schnitzel Happens," and serves a baked-crisp 3-pound pork shank with a bock-beer sauce (aka Bayerische Schweinshaxe from Germany's Lippe-Detmold region), then notes on its menu: "Eat the whole thing and get on the Wall of Shank. Get a t-shirt and a pillow to take a nap."
The wood-beamed dining room and bar area at Edelweiss German-American Restaurant are decorated to the hilt, with plates on the walls, hearts-and-swirl stencils along the chair rail, and flags and banners strung around both rooms. With Oktoberfest in full swing through Nov. 7, there's also a lineup of bands (think accordions, lederhosen and a cowbell or two) scheduled Thursdays through Sundays.
Order that pork shank if you think you can handle it. But there's also a fine assortment of classic German dishes, with Hackepeter (steak tartare with its onions-caper-mustard-egg-yolk fixings) and potato pancakes among the appetizers. Entrees include a trio of schnitzels (crispy Wiener schnitzel delivers a good crunch), sauerbraten (the gravy's nicely sweet-tart), pork loin roasted with caraway seeds, Rindsrouladen, sausages and duck. Entrees come with soup of the day and a side. You'll be pleased with the red cabbage, spaetzle and bacon-and-onion-studded German fried potatoes.
Strudel's available for dessert; so is a baked souffle called Salzburger Nockerln. German beers include Spaten Oktoberfest, BBK Oktoberfest and Kostritzer Black Lager. 7650 W. Irving Park Road, Norridge; 708-452-6040, www.edelweissdining.com. Lunch and dinner daily.
-- J.H.
Chicago Brauhaus
Chicago Brauhaus, a fixture of Lincoln Square for more than 40 years, pulls off all the German restaurant cliches -- beer steins, sausages and schnitzels, wait staff in dirndls, German tchotchkes on the walls -- without a crumb of irony. This place isn't trying to be a German Gaststatte, it simply is one, and that's the charm.
On a recent Sunday night, an accordion player with a snowy white mane leads a band whose members seem as if they were born singing polka tunes. The floor is carpeted; the crowd is largely over 50. Chandeliers with red lampshades cast a crimson glow over the long corner bar and rows of tables, outfitted with the kind of metal-legged, pleather-clad chairs you'd find at a small-town Elks lodge. By the end of the night, a diner has taken to the stage to karaoke Tony Bennett with the accordion for backup, and couples are slow-dancing and demanding an encore.
And oh, the food. Nothing is groundbreaking; everything is satisfying. Get any of the schnitzels (chicken, pork or Wiener), pounded thin and fried to a perfect light brown. Leberknodel (liver dumpling) soup has a deeply flavored broth I can't get enough of. If with a group, order as many sausages as you can and swap bites -- bratwurst, knackwurst, Wienerwurst, Thuringer.
Beers include seven German or Austrian brews on draft (Spaten, Stiegl, Bitburger, Julius Echter Weiss, Hofbrau, BBK Pils and Kostritzer Black) and seven more by the bottle, plus a few American cheapies. Just stick to clinking mugs, not wine glasses, as the German wines here are a little too sweet to palate. 4732 N. Lincoln Ave., 773-784-4444, www.chicagobrauhaus.com. Dinner Wednesday-Sunday; lunch Monday, Wednesday-Friday.
-- Marissa Conrad
