Radegast Hall & Biergarten
113 N. 3rd St. (at Berry St.) B'klyn
718-963-3973
If I could conquer chafing and social mortification and make sweet love to a bar, my mistress would be Williamsburg’s swoon-worthy Radegast Hall & Biergarten. Starting with a brick tobacco-and-candy warehouse, a team led by Ivan Kohut—who reinvigorated Astoria’s suds-and-bratwurst Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden—injected the 4,500-square-foot brick structure with enough seductive, old-world opulence to set my heart aflutter.
In the main dining room await iron chandeliers, rump-welcoming wooden booths and old-timey black-and-white pics. The bar’s as angular as the haircuts of local young ’uns, who settle into seats to sample the dozen uniformly overpriced imported drafts that await ($7 pint, $13 liter, $18 pitcher), from a floral Dentergems Witbier to a toothsome Spaten Oktoberfest to an effervescent Pilsner Urquell.
More foreign bottled beers await, but stick to draughts dispensed in mugs sturdy enough to brain a man. To accomplish such celebratory smashing, avoid the dining room. That’s for lonely folks and fuddy-duddies craving a quiet pint of beer and perhaps veal schnitzel ($17), braised rabbit ($18) or chicken-and-rabbit-liver pâté ($8).
Scamper instead to the adjoining, communal beer hall. The concrete-floor room—which possesses a double-height ceiling that opens in finer weather—is a rabblerousing, brick-walled temple for worshippers of suds and swine. At the rear grill, a perspiring and highly focused chef flame-cooks lengths of crackling bratwurst ($8). Top one with pungent mustard and scarf it at a candle-crowned table—hewn from 150-year-old wood—that’s sizable enough for several dozen comrades. (Stake out territory early, or you’ll be stuck beside monosyllabic meatheads, dude.)
With your belly appeased, you should indulge in copious quaffs, as a compatriot and I did one weekend evening. We arrived at 6 p.m., fingers crossed for an early-bird deal.
“Sorry, no happy hour,” said a waitress wearing a formless blouse favored by milkmaids. She sat at our table and glanced around the spacious room, where folks were plenty happy to pay full price.
“OK, well, I’ll have…the Weihenstephaner Dunkel Weisse,” I replied. It’s a dark wheat beer, ideal for goose bump-raising season.
“You know, dunkel means dark, while weisse is a wheat beer,” she began. “So that means— ”
“I know, I know,” I said, barely refraining myself from uttering, “Sweetheart, my liver’s a goddamn encyclopedia.”
Still, for less-versed lushes, this approach is informative. There’s no need to blindly order, meaning you become blindingly bamboozled on delicious draughts. And that’s the attraction of Radegast. Sure, rarefied eats abound, but that’s a blatant attempt to appease the yummy mommies and condo-owning daddies inhabiting the ’hood. Yeah, yeah, Radegast’s owners claim they’re recalling the era of families-welcome beer halls, but infants belong at Tea Lounge—not at this alcohol depot.
Who wants to hold their tongue around impressionable youngsters? When I’m guzzling my way to happiness, I want to argue mightily and curse coarsely. For this, visit Radegast post-midnight, when parents have strollered their charges home. Rational imbibers are visiting dreamland. What remains is a besotting paradise that grows exponentially more beautiful as beer mugs are emptied, filled and clinked, saluting buddies new, old and wildly bleary-eyed.
113 N. 3rd St. (at Berry St.) B'klyn
718-963-3973
If I could conquer chafing and social mortification and make sweet love to a bar, my mistress would be Williamsburg’s swoon-worthy Radegast Hall & Biergarten. Starting with a brick tobacco-and-candy warehouse, a team led by Ivan Kohut—who reinvigorated Astoria’s suds-and-bratwurst Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden—injected the 4,500-square-foot brick structure with enough seductive, old-world opulence to set my heart aflutter.
In the main dining room await iron chandeliers, rump-welcoming wooden booths and old-timey black-and-white pics. The bar’s as angular as the haircuts of local young ’uns, who settle into seats to sample the dozen uniformly overpriced imported drafts that await ($7 pint, $13 liter, $18 pitcher), from a floral Dentergems Witbier to a toothsome Spaten Oktoberfest to an effervescent Pilsner Urquell.
More foreign bottled beers await, but stick to draughts dispensed in mugs sturdy enough to brain a man. To accomplish such celebratory smashing, avoid the dining room. That’s for lonely folks and fuddy-duddies craving a quiet pint of beer and perhaps veal schnitzel ($17), braised rabbit ($18) or chicken-and-rabbit-liver pâté ($8).
Scamper instead to the adjoining, communal beer hall. The concrete-floor room—which possesses a double-height ceiling that opens in finer weather—is a rabblerousing, brick-walled temple for worshippers of suds and swine. At the rear grill, a perspiring and highly focused chef flame-cooks lengths of crackling bratwurst ($8). Top one with pungent mustard and scarf it at a candle-crowned table—hewn from 150-year-old wood—that’s sizable enough for several dozen comrades. (Stake out territory early, or you’ll be stuck beside monosyllabic meatheads, dude.)
With your belly appeased, you should indulge in copious quaffs, as a compatriot and I did one weekend evening. We arrived at 6 p.m., fingers crossed for an early-bird deal.
“Sorry, no happy hour,” said a waitress wearing a formless blouse favored by milkmaids. She sat at our table and glanced around the spacious room, where folks were plenty happy to pay full price.
“OK, well, I’ll have…the Weihenstephaner Dunkel Weisse,” I replied. It’s a dark wheat beer, ideal for goose bump-raising season.
“You know, dunkel means dark, while weisse is a wheat beer,” she began. “So that means— ”
“I know, I know,” I said, barely refraining myself from uttering, “Sweetheart, my liver’s a goddamn encyclopedia.”
Still, for less-versed lushes, this approach is informative. There’s no need to blindly order, meaning you become blindingly bamboozled on delicious draughts. And that’s the attraction of Radegast. Sure, rarefied eats abound, but that’s a blatant attempt to appease the yummy mommies and condo-owning daddies inhabiting the ’hood. Yeah, yeah, Radegast’s owners claim they’re recalling the era of families-welcome beer halls, but infants belong at Tea Lounge—not at this alcohol depot.
Who wants to hold their tongue around impressionable youngsters? When I’m guzzling my way to happiness, I want to argue mightily and curse coarsely. For this, visit Radegast post-midnight, when parents have strollered their charges home. Rational imbibers are visiting dreamland. What remains is a besotting paradise that grows exponentially more beautiful as beer mugs are emptied, filled and clinked, saluting buddies new, old and wildly bleary-eyed.
