On Tuesday night, in the rain and mist, one of my friends asked me if I was up for dinner at Jacob Wirth. I Googled it, perused the menu and said yes (she had also gotten the Groupon earlier in the week). So we left in the cold rain and walked from our Post Office Square office, to Jacob Wirth’s location in the theatre district.
Ridiculously high ceilings, with lights strung back and forth across, made this reminiscent of the good brauhaus that Boyfriend and I went to three times during our four days in Munich (we couldn’t help ourselves there that food was fantastic). I was immediately wistful for a good German ale – and they had it! With an extensive beer menu (it took up well over two pages, and about eight inches of that were German/Belgain imports; BLISS!) and a quick scan, I found Hofbrau (yahoo), Fransiskaner (yippee), and many others that I had tried previously while in the land of beer. I danced a little happy dance in my head while I decided which beer I wanted; at $7/beer, these were not cheap pints! The friend I was with was not the biggest of beer fans, so I ordered two of the fruitier beers off the menu, a Hoegaarten and the Fransiskaner (which I knew was delicious) and let her choose which one she wanted.
After (finally) making a beer selection, we looked at the food menu, ordering the house pretzels as an appetizer and both of us ordering the smoked, grilled bratwurst for a main course. Unfortunately, the pretzels were a tad dry and needed extra mustard – they gave us some homemade honey mustard that was more honey than mustard, so I modified it with a hefty squirt of Gulden’s to balance the flavor. Pretzels set, we proceeded to eat half of the basket in about 5 mins (also why aren’t pretzels the table bread of choice in a German restaurant? They gave out cornbread to start the meal). Washing it all down with our delicious beer, the Hoegaarten is good but watery, so keep that in mind if you order it.
Our entrees came out to much more pleased silent applause; perfect grill marks on the brats and a giant mound of sweet potato fries for my side. The Bratwurst perfectly cooked with just the right air of smokiness to give them a wonderful depth of flavor, mixed with the house cured red-cabbage; they were wonderful. The sweet potato fries were fine too, though I think next time I would go for the German Potato Salad.
Overall, my trip to Jacob Wirth’s was a lot of fun – I left wanting to sing a good German drinking song. And I can’t gush enough about the Beer Menu, but next time I’ll skip the pretzels.
