The best German restaurants in NYC

You might ask à la South Park, “What the fuck is a Bavarian beer garden doing in Alphabet City?” Upon entering, you’d have your answer: It’s schvimming mit kustomers. In addition to the trees and checkered tablecloths, there’s a guy in a ski suit doing the chicken dance near the bar. Around a dozen German brews are on tap, with several in the bottle. After knocking back a few, you too will be shaking a tail feather.

The German transplant-owners honor their heritage at this indoor biergarten and kaffeehaus in Fort Greene, outfitted with antique cuckoo clocks and large skylights. Along with hefty steins of Bavarian brews, find oversize plates of schnitzel with shoestring fries, and farmer's sausage with shredded citrus kale (a modern take on gruenkohl und pinkel). Daytime offerings include Kitten Coffee alongside German pastries and cakes.

Austrian heavyhitter Kurt Gutenbrunner still delivers his best work at this airy West Village corner perch that feels like a neighborhood hangout despite walls filled with Julian Schnabels (he’s a regular). His seasonally influenced menu rotates between haute takes on Austrian standbys and more unusual fare.

Bar Freud is a slick, sepia-toned love letter to the Vienna of the early 1900s, with modernist banquettes, industrial pendant lights and a Rorschach-test–style painting on the ceiling. Most guests order golden Wiener schnitzels and cheesy spaetzle before calling it a night. But the new in-house beverage director, Albert Trummer (like Freud, an Austrian) from Apothéke, attempts to make Bar Freud’s new qualifier count with his flashy cocktails. 

Semi-industrial Arthur Kill Road in Staten Island is home to a few gems, such as a turn-of-the-century Bavarian beer garden. Sit outside and enjoy any of nearly 200 beers, plus sauerbraten, peppery-sweet goulash and potato pancakes. 

Germans have been guzzling beer for long enough to know what soaks it up best: boiled knockwurst with crusty rolls and hot mustard, mountains of kartoffelsalat (potato salad) and giant slabs of Wiener schnitzel. At this biergarten, with around eight selections on tap, you can’t beat the haus special: a shareable wurst party platter with a five-liter keg of Spaten or Dortmunder.

For more than 50 years, this lodgelike Germantown holdover has clung to its roots—dirndled waitresses, men in lederhosen and bubbling steins of Spaten. Sausages, all supplied by neighboring butcher Schaller & Weber, are the way to go: Platters arrive weighted down with tasty links of pork-and-beef bauernwurst, veal weisswurst and pork bratwurst.

Swig from steins and feast on brats at this 40-seat German beer hall in Astoria. Six taps dispense brews from Deutschland, including options like Radeberger Pilsner, Hofbräu Lager and Spaten Oktoberfest. Soccer fans can catch games from Germany's Bundesliga league while chowing down on currywurst, frikadelle (flattened, fried meatballs) or schnitzel.

This 5,000-square-foot hall—outfitted with communal tables and iron chandeliers—honors the German heritage of beer-loving sibling-owners. Drawing from childhood meals at their grandparents’ house, the Queens-born duo put together a menu of traditional bierhaus bites, including cheese-stuffed sausages and a giant soft pretzel paired with chicken-liver mousse and obatzda (a cheese-and-beer dip).

Co-owner Erwin Schrottner—a native of southern Austria—named the place for one of his three young daughters, and it seems he had them in mind when devising the menu. The lineup includes simple but precisely prepared beer-hall staples: house-made bratwurst, spaetzle, fluffy quark (cheese) dumplings, tangy pickles and fresh-baked soft pretzels.