On a trip up to North Dakota late last year, I had gone out for a sample of beers at the Drekker Brewing Company in Fargo with one of my dealers. (Click here to see the entry on the Drekker Brewing Company.) While we were having beers at Drekker, he asked me if I liked German food. I said that I was always up for good German food as it seemed to be getting tougher and tougher to find good German restaurants in the Midwest. He said, "Good, because we're going to a place just down the street for dinner." After his wife showed up and we finished our beers, we took a short walk down the street to the Wurst Bier Hall.
Brothers Bert and Klaus Meyers - along with Bert's wife, Lisa - have been in the restaurant business around Fargo for a number of years. Bert and Lisa owned a popular place - Bertrosa's - for 13 years before selling it in 2012. And Bert and Klaus also are partners in Dempsey's Public House, a popular Irish bar in downtown Fargo. In 2013, Bert, Lisa and Klaus came up with a concept for the Wurst Bier Hall modeled after the beer halls with communal seating and good food and good beer. The trio opened Wurst Bier Hall in January of 2014.
Wurst Bier Hall is located in the same building that houses Drekker Brewing Co. - the Cityscapes Plaza building that features retail shops and restaurants on the ground floor with apartments on the upper four floors. The Wurst Bier Hall is located in the NE corner of the building on 1st Ave. N in downtown Fargo. (see map) Thursday's always seem to be a lively night in Fargo, as it seems to be with many college towns throughout the Midwest. And the crowd at Wurst Bier Hall was definitely into it that evening.
The bar area features a long bar with Edison lamps suspended above. They feature over 30 beers on tap, many of them from microbreweries in North Dakota and Minnesota. Wurst Bier Hall also has nearly 20 beers, ciders, and non-alcoholic beverages in cans and bottles.
On the walls around the bar and dining areas were flat screen monitors displaying a revolving list of available beers at that particular moment at Wurst Bier Hall. It was a nice high-tech way of being able to show what beers they had to offer.
They had Trivia Night going on and a number of people were deeply involved with that. This is the small dining area to the right as you come into the and most of the patrons seated in there were gazing intently at the flat screens on the room when the questions would come up.
My dealer and his wife saw some friends seated toward the end of a large communal table in the dining area near the bar. One of their friends I had met a couple times before on trips to Fargo. (I was starting to feel like I was an honorary citizen of Fargo.) We sat with them at the table and I sort of felt sorry for our server, Natasha, who, no doubt, had trouble figuring out who was with who up and down the long communal table. I enjoyed the Drekker Broken Rudder Irish red ale that I just had a couple doors down from the Wurst Bier Hall earlier in the evening and I ordered one of those to start out.
The menu at the Wurst Bier Hall isn't all that extensive, but it's very interesting. Among the appetizers featured on the menu were the Bavarian pretzels, loaded fries, sweet potato fries, and a bacon flight consisting of a combination of Guinness-glazed bacon, brown sugar-glazed bacon, a black pepper bacon, and smoked bacon. We ended up getting a couple of the appetizers - the Wurst poutine consisting of fries topped with deep-fried mozzarella cheese curds and brown gravy; and the pierogis stuffed with chopped potatoes and onions and topped with a spicy curry butter sauce and cilantro with a side of sour cream. The poutine fries were very good, but the pierogis were fabulous. The sauce was slightly spicy (to my palate), and it was a great hearty start to the meal.
Wurst Bier Hall features a number of wursts and sausages on the menu, as well. They have three different categories - the Classics, such as Polish sausage, bratwurst, mettwurst and German sausage; the Gourmet, which consists of a smoked jalapeno cheddar sausage, a blue cheese sausage and a chicken apple sausage; and the Exotics, which feature fresh sausage links made from wild boar, pheasant, and elk. All of the sausages from the Exotic list can be made Vietnamese "banh mi" style topped with Sriracha mayo, pickled carrot and daikon radish, cucumber, cilantro sprigs, fresh sliced jalapenos and a soy sauce drizzle.
My dealer and I both got the jager schnitzel with spaetzle and red cabbage on the side. It was a 6 ounce pork loin that we both got breaded and fried. (Chargrilled was available, as well). It was topped with thick mushroom gravy and came with red cabbage. We had our choice of fries, sweet potato fries or spaetzle for a side and I had the spaetzle topped with the mushroom gravy.
The jager schnitzel was slightly tough and a bit overcooked. But the wonderful mushroom gravy helped with the overall taste of the deep fried pork. The spaetzel was wonderful - once again the gravy helped out tremendously - as was the red cabbage. It wasn't the best German food that I've had, but it was good enough.
My dealer had ordered the spaetzle mac and cheese for his side as an upcharge. It was basically the same spaetzle with macaroni noodles and a blended cheese sauce. His wife loves the spaetzle mac & cheese and she was stealing bites from his plate as she was still working on the appetizers that we had on the table.
On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best, I'd give the beer selection at Wurst Bier Hall a 4.5, but give the food a 3.5. The jager schnitzel was a little tough and overcooked, but the mushroom gravy helped the taste. The eclectic beer selection was top notch and it was tough to beat the interesting appetizers they had on the menu. Natasha did a great job of taking care of us, staying on top of empty beer glasses and being able to figure out the mayhem of different tickets at the long table she was in charge of. I had a great time at the Wurst Bier Hall and look forward to a revisit on future trips to Fargo. (Photo courtesy Brandon Ashmore of Repor Photography.)
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