Hofbräuhaus, Las Vegas

So where do you go in Las Vegas when you aren’t tossing your hard-earned cash down the ravening maw of the casinos?

To the least Vegas-y joint in Vegas, particularly if you like beer and especially particularly if you like German beer. Built by the folks who supply its HB beer, the Hofbräuhaus is a faithful reconstruction of the original building that still is slinging suds — or dienen Schaum – in Munich. Been there, too, and to the HB beer tent at Oktoberfest. That was nice.

And, no, it’s nothing like going to Vegas and visiting the Paris casino.

In its admirable pursuit of authenticity, the Hofbräuhaus operates without recourse to a single slot machine. The bar at the front entrance was almost deserted on the day I visited in early January, save for the appropriately attired and tattooed barmaid, who was accommodating enough to pose for a suspicious looking character armed with a Cannon. Plus it was 2 o’clock on a gorgeous winter’s afternoon, and the Consumer Electronics Show was in full swing, commanding the burg’s attention. I hit the Hofbräuhaus on my way out of town, and the great thing is, McCarren Airport is only about a mile away, so it’s a natural departing shot. No surprise, the latest wasn’t my first visit to this particular cathedral of beer beatified. My discovery of the Vegas Hofbräuhaus was accidental, originally, and I was lucky to find it. In another attempt to avoid passing binging, banging, “Wheel….Of….Fortune!” bellowing slot machines, I booked myself at a Hyatt inn-style hotel that, as it turned out, was right across the parking lot. Spent my evenings before dinner in the bar watching German soccer piped in over the televisions, often alongside authentic Germans who were amused an American understood anything about the game. And I could tell them my story about working out with the guys from the German national team in Frankfurt, which, by the way, has the word’s greatest pretzel stand in its train station…but I digress. Suffice it to say, I had a very good time.

Most people discover the Hofbräuhaus because they stay across the street at the Hard Rock Hotel. Otherwise, because it’s really at the edge of city’s touristy center, the place isn’t constantly overrun by the pale, the bleary, the casino addled yearning to breath free of the atmosphere that eroded their bank accounts. Of course, clientele is one the Hofbräuhaus charms. A mix of brau-loving tourists and locals, the place completely lacks the nervous energy of forced fun. Oh, and, by the way, you probably should take another look at the banner photo on top if you’re looking for that tattoo.

The main dining room behind the bar does have a great look with high ceilings appropriately decorated in designs just obscure enough to make you think that something ancient and dubious might be hanging in the corners. I don’t know why that makes for better drinking, but somehow it does.

Of course, a nice, wholesome little story might explain each of the designs and symbols, but what fun is that? And if Dan Brown could get rich misrepresenting semiotics, I can at least have a little fun with the discipline. Create an atmosphere. Conjure some Bavarian hockum for purposes of general amusement. Maybe the good Doctor will pop in with the Monster in tow. Maybe a deranged monk will wander around spouting Satanic gibberish. Maybe something with a werewolf, only one that doesn’t knock over your beer. As long as I don’t have to look at another set of pasty Middle American knees getting no less pasty prodding a slot machine. You got out of the winter, now get into the sun, people. The casinos are attached to pools.

Despite the hour, a decent number of folks inhabited the dining room and all seemed pretty cheerful. And they had every reason to be. They had a terrific menu to chose from, full of German treats. Of course, some gastronosmirks have not learned to appreciate German cuisine. Garlic and olive oil can do wonderful things to a meal, but roasts and sausage, appropriately prepared, can be awesome, particularly when properly washed down. Happily, the beer menu at the Hofbräuhaus always includes a seasonal HB offering and, in early January, that was Hofbräu Dark Wheat Beer.

Delivered by the kindly Kristin, a mellow soul who didn’t question the patron taking photos of everything she brought over, the seasonal is a top flight beer, not a quite curl your toes example of the art, but that probably made it a better food pairing. The flavor wasn’t so specific that it could only work with a narrow range of food. As might be expected from a wheat beer, it has a yeasty flavor but with a residual hoppiness. As such, the flavor was pronounced at the first taste but settles into a creamy just slightly bitter finish.

HDWB — I’m not writing out the name repeatedly — is a great beer to complement mellower meat dishes such as roast pork or even roast chicken and, luckily, sipped up as a match for German sausage. It might not stand up to hot sausage like chorizo and lacks the depth of flavor for steak, but so be it. Anything, or anyone, trying to be all things to all people is on the path to failure.

Given the beer and, surprise, surprise, I didn’t wait for the meal to sample the suds, the lunch I picked from a fairly extensive menu was Münchner Weisswürste. Try saying Weisswürste three times fast. Really, do it. I’ll wait…

…Did you wind up whistling as you tried to pronounce the second syllable third time around? Bet you didn’t think this blog could be interactive. Twice. I know you looked for that tattoo, even if you spotted it before reading.

But I digress.

Münicher Weisswüste consists of two Munchen-style white sausages, one veal, one pork, grilled at my preference, and served with sliced pickle, onion and tomato, with a crusty pretzel on top and Bavarian sweat mustard on the side.

Actually, the beer straight up with the sausage was a little more than the veal could handle. HDWB was a great complement to the spicier pork sausage. Still, skewer that veal sausage, chunk out few veggie slabs, add a little of the fantastic mustard and follow with a swig of the beer: Teutonic paradise. Tyr would slap his remaining hand on the table in approval. Tyr is my favorite German god: brave, noble, self sacrificing. Thor is a moron.

A little time remained before I had to fly for the airport, so I had to sample the HB Dunkel to wash down the pretzel. Yeah, that’s why I wanted it. Plus, I knew from experience at the HB tent at Oktoberfest it was going to be terrific. A wonderful if just slightly hazy memory. Stalwart, round, nutty, biting Dunkel.

The correct sequence: Pretzel. Mustard. Dunkel. Repeat. Tyr pounds the table again.

Speaking of Dunkel. Repeat…Apparently, a custom of the Hofbräuhaus, and certainly one of its charms, is that the waitresses will spank you with a wooden sampler paddle under circumstances I did not inquire after. It’s the only such proposition you are likely to get in Las Vegas free of charge.

Nothing as such happened to the virtuous renderer of this blog, virtuous, perhaps, by virtue of having to get to the airport. After trying the cloudy, yeasty, sour-finishing traditional Hefe Weizen. So I would sleep on the plane. Yeah, that’s why I wanted it.

I can hear my friend Billy saying: Yeah, ya nose is growing Pinnocchio.

But, once again, and for the final time, at least for this post, I digress.

Pretzel. Mustard. Dunkel. Repeat.

Beer I Fell Into: San Diego and The Homefront

California has a lot of microbreweries, and the Peroni folks taught me to drink beer and make pizza at the same time, with the help of the Institute of Culinary Education. And that’s a pretty neat accomplishment, as I’m still working on chewing gum and walking simultaneously. But I digress.

First thing’s first: Business took me to San Diego recently, which is a lovely town where very attractive women seem to outnumber men, good looking and my sort, by about three to one. Guess where I’m moving when I win the lottery? Wait, I’ll be rich. Maybe I won’t have to go to the good-looking women. Something to ponder.

Anyway, until then, I’ll keep writing about beer, and whatever they pay me to write. Back in San Diego, I took a bit of time to try some of the hundreds of microbrews produced in the Golden State, which nickname now may refer to the color of a good lager. My first close encounter of the suds kind occurred because I spotted a barbecue joint, Nathan’s Smokehouse & Deli, just off Fifth Ave. on Island in the Gaslamp entertainment district. Don’t worry if you can’t spot it right away. Just check out the guy with the sign.

Now, I’m a big fan of the three B’s: beer, barbecue and the blues. So, I made a B-Line (sorry) for ol’ Nathans and had a good pulled pork sandwich and a fine beer.

Drop Top amber comes from Widmer Bros. and has a nice complexity topped by a slightly burnt note from the barley. The ale is hoppy, satisfying and works with barbecue, which was nice given the circumstances. I have this odd feeling that it is one of those beers that’s better on draft, given clean lines, then out of the bottle, something I find true many beers that have some sharp flavors in their profile. Maybe the mellower carbonation allows the flavors to bend better, or maybe its because bottled beer tends to hit the back of the mouth first and bounce around rather than settle on the tongue. Or maybe its just me. Now, I know what you are saying: Widmer Bros. Not brewed in California. Brewed in Oregon. Stop being so picky. After satisfying my far too frequently indulged inner child at the San Diego Zoo, I headed back into the Gaslamp and dropped in on The Hopping Pig. Now, please, don’t take that literally, although it might be something of a feat if the pig was particularly energetic or tweaked out or such. But I digress. In reality, The Hopping Pig is a gastropub that happens to have very pleasant staffers who not will happily inform you about the many craft beers the joint has available and even go out of their way to find out things like where a particularly microbrewery is located. Lost Abby’s Lost & Found was a stand out. Lost & Found is one of the year-around brews produced by the busy San Marcos, Calif., brewery. Based on the Trappist style, Lost & Found is brewed with a raisin puree to add a sweet bitter complexity that plays out into chocolate/coffee roll across the palate and lingers there. It’s a top-flight brew, and the only basis of criticism of it is in the hopping. It needs just a tiny bit more bit to finish off the flavor. It is, however, a piddling criticism. By the way, in another digression from the topic, if you are in the Gaslamp, go to the Ghirardelli ice cream shop. Just do it. The difference between being miserable and being happy in life is stopping at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop. Then go walk off the glow at the zoo. Would this gal pass up the Ghirardelli ice cream shop if it sold bamboo sherbert?

I think not.

Now, on to Peroni.

Allison, who is terrific, and I’ll through a rock at anyone who says otherwise, was kind enough to hook me up with a beer and pizza making whirl sponsored by Peroni and hosted by the affable, Greg. He demonstrated definitively that Peroni is a really good food beer, particularly in its ability to cleanse the palate after, in the example of the occasion, the chomping of really good sharp parmesan cheese. Given my experience, I’m happy to agree that Peroni is a good food beer paired with light foods. Its ability to set the drinker up for the next nibble makes it a great accompaniment to complex light buffets, fruit and cheese plates, and all that sort of nosh-y stuff.

The Culinary folks made us don the whole chef ensemble to make the pizza — apron adorned to assemble and topper trimmed to toggle the toppings — but I had been trying on tall hats earlier in the day at a novelty store. I should have realized that Fate was going to flip the old irony switch on my butt once again. I’m the one who shouldn’t be wearing a tall hat

.Pizza making turned out to be a good time, and I turned out to be pretty good at the mechanics. I’m not taking the credit for that, though. Not only did we have a good teacher in Sue from the Institute of Culinary Education, where the event was held, but, having grown up in New York, I spent a significant proportion of my life in pizza parlors watching the stuff concocted. I got my crust laid out, laden and launched into the oven in good form. Then I got daring, or, actually, I flapped my mindless maw, saying that I wanted to try doing things the old fashion way, but which I mean throwing a spinning pie crust into the air and catching it. What risk of embarrassment was there in doing that in a room full of people? And why can’t a mouth understand what the brain has learned through experience of the sacred principles of Murphy’s Law? As applied in this case, Murpho’s adage might run: Don’t brag about your pizza-making ambitions until you’re sure the joint is out of dough.

Naturally, Sue was leaning beside an untouched dome of looming dough. Sue looked at me, Allison probably looked at me, Alexandra, her daughter, might have looked at me, and, although I’m not sure who looked at me, I still felt their cruel accusation burning into the well of my paranoid imagination: You don’t have the guts!

So, I figured, if you’re going to make an ass out of yourself, go big buns. I grabbed the dough and pressed it out a bit on the table. I did mention all that time spent in the pizza parlor, right? I picked up the dough using my fists, a technique I’d seen before, got my two wrists lined up and spun them up and out. The crust rose hovered and slipped right back over my fists, which quickly got their clunky selves out of the way. And there it was. A nice round, unpunctured, untorn, unmangled orb of pizza crust laying intact on the table. Someone at the table called out: Do it again! But perfection can’t be repeated. Not by me, anyway. I determined to live with my limited triumph.

The pizza was pretty damn good, although I didn’t spot my pie in the after-baking buffet. Maybe I’m better with the dynamic element of pizza making than I am the culinary.

And that’s a big intro to two other really fine beers we had with our meal. The first was a Blue Moonspice beer, Blue Moon Spiced Amber. I’m not a big fan of Blue Moon signature Belgian white, but I found the beer to be excellent. (I forget to write down the names of the two beers we had at the pizza soiree, in another oversight. Luckily, Lisa-Michelle, who does a lively lifestyle blog for 40-somethings, was more diligent than I and sent the proper names along.)

The Leinenkugel Berry Weiss was as good as Flanders-brewed lambics I have consumed and would be a nice pairing with cheese and fruit plate, and even a light, non-chocolate desert. The gentle fruit flavor wasn’t cloying or assertively sweet. It struck me as a bit lighter in character than more fruit-fortified lambics, too. So it likely is an easy drinking beer for those moments where you might be in the mood for few somethings that are a little sweet, like on a summer evening waiting for the ice cream truck to drive around.

And now I’ll get out of your lives before I go altogether Norman Rockwell on y’all.

Slanté

Hey, just when you thought you got away clean, one more digression…Our overall chef host from the Institute of Culinary Education, Erica Wides, has a radio show called Let’s Get Real on the Heritage Radio Network. You can hook into via www.letsgetrealshow.com. Episodes include We’re Meant To Eat Meat, so you know its good

md