Bar Review: Radegast Hall & Beirgarten – Brooklyn NY

After a great time at the Sputyen Duyvil we headed a couple blocks ‘westish’ to 3rd & Barry in Williamsburg for what we all hoped would be a pretty cool experience at the Radegast Hall & Beirgarten.  Radegast Hall is a self proclaimed “Authentic” Beirgarten, not having been to an Authentic Beirgarten in Germany, I’ll take them at their work, because it looked like one to me.

Radegast Beirgarten

The place is divided into two sections, the bar and the hall.  We got there about 8pm, it was pretty crowded,  split between the outgoing families finishing up their meals and the incoming single/no kids crowd.  It was very loud and  wonderful smells of food dominated our senses. We looked for a spot in the hall, completely full, but it was about 70 feet of tables with benches lining either wall.  It looked really cool, a pretty social friendly atmosphere.  We ended up finding a table by the door that fit the four of us.

I believe this hall only sells German, Belgian, and Czech beers and if you are unfamiliar with the styles and brands it can feel a bit overwhelming not knowing what to get.  My advise is to look online, most places now list their beers on their websites, so you can checkout reviews and ratings on particular beers or try to identify a style of beer from the list or a brewery you recognize.  For me, I knew as soon as I saw Weihenstephaner on draft that was what I was going to get it, for 2 reasons, I like the Brewery and I like the style – Dunkel Weisse.  The Radegast Hall also has 11 other taps of quality German and Belgian beers, but if none of those 12 taps fits your fancy, they have another 42 brands of bottled beer.

Allan Drinking Dunkle Weisse

After getting our table, we ordered a round of beer, 1/2 liters of Weihenstephaner Dunkel Weisse.  Having a choice of liters and 1/2 liters with so many beers to choose from, I always get the smaller glass.  The Dunkel Weisse was excellent, malty with notes of banana and cloves, extremely well balanced beer.  Probably on of the best dark wheat beers I’ve had.  I enjoyed this beer and I thought it went well with our appetizer; the four of us split an order of Kas Spatzle.  I loved this dish, probably because it had bacon in it and every thing tastes better with bacon.

Each one of us had an excellent main course; Catlyn had the Hungarian Goulash, My wife had the Rib Steak, Allen had the Roasted Pork tenderloin, and I had the Braised Rabbit (which my loving wife kept referring to as “Thumper”).  But, “Thumper” was delicious and so was Dani’s steak. With my dinner, I switched over to a Schnieder Edel Weisse.  This 500ml beer was poured into a gigantic pilsner glass using the technique of inverting the bottle into the glass and slowly pulling the bottle out.  Try it next time you have a wheat beer, it leaves you with a perfect head of beer, just make sure your glass will fit the beer and head.

I was very impressed with the quality of food, it is a very large place but the food was excellent, cooked the way we asked, and we didn’t have to wait very long between courses, not were we rushed.   Good Food, Good Beer, Wonderful Family, a great Dinner!