It is barely 5:30 on a Monday evening and the noise at Hofbrauhaus Las Vegas is ear-splitting. A German band is doing its shtick, auf Deutsch, and at one of the long benches where people are celebrating Oktoberfest, a little girl with golden curls, perhaps no more than 8, covers her ears with both hands.
Perhaps you've heard of Oktoberfest, the international bacchanal held every year in Munich, where the world-famous Hofbrauhaus originated. Despite the enormous size of our version, a branch of that same restaurant, the Munich original dwarfs it, as does the number of beer-drinking, sausage-eating patrons.
But hey, this is America, where we drink our beer about 10 degrees colder than they do in the Vaterland (well, it is hotter here), and where the staff at a restaurant could be from anywhere. So I wasn't surprised when my waitress, a total charmer, turned out to be ethnic Chinese from Vietnam and my bus-girl, a lovely student from Poland.
Hofbrauhaus is a huge space, with a gift shop and bar in the dead front. Just behind it is a vast main hall, framed by cases filled with glass beer steins, and a vault-like ceiling reminiscent of the rathskellers all over Central Europe. In the rear, there is a large room where artificial trees fight for artificial light from a trompe l'oeil ceiling, painted with a blue sky and fluffy, white clouds. It's quite impressive, about as much kitschy gemutlichkeit as the average person can swallow.
The beer is easily the best in town. The brews are all direct from Bavaria: terrific, mildly hoppy Hofbrau original; a much stronger Oktoberfest beer sold this month only; weissbeer, a light colored brew; and dunkel, sweet dark beer that makes the perfect complement to the fresh-baked pretzels, also an import from Germany (they come frozen and are baked daily on the premises).
I could live on just the beers and pretzels but the menu, overseen by Austrian Executive Chef Hans Weiss, reads like a Greatest Hits of German Cuisine.
Wurst (sausages) is a must. My favorite is weisswurst, a fresh veal and pork sausage that real Munchners allegedly never eat after noon so as not to detract from their freshness. They are served poached (the better choice) or grilled, with a pretzel, and some hearty brown mustard. I'm also enamored of the majoram-flavored veal sausages, the smoked sausage that comes on the Hofbrauhaus platte (along with a massive hunk of roast pork, a smoked pork chop, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes), and the chicken bratwurst.
The entrées are good and authentic, though the time I ordered the sauerbraten, basically sour pot roast, the beef wasn't nearly as tender as I had hoped. One of the most indulgent dishes is jagerschnitzel, a pork cutlet topped with creamy mushroom sauce, bacon and cooked onions, and served with spatzle, little German- or Austrian-style flour dumplings.
On the menu's back page is a variant of spatzle, allgauer kasespatzle, where the dumplings come topped with Swiss cheese and crispy fried onions, sort of a Mitteleuropa mac and cheese. In addition, a side dish of bread dumplings is wonderful: tasty, spongy orbs that make the perfect vehicle for sopping up the rich brown sauce that graces many of the dishes. As you've already worked out, German cuisine is not Atkins-friendly, and I haven't seen low-carb beer on the menu.
There are missteps. One is obatzer, a spiced-cheese dip. The kitchen decided to use Philadelphia cream cheese instead of the more typical farmer's cheese used in Europe, which makes it gummy. The other is German pancake soup, which on occasion has a sour aftertaste in the broth. That said, there are a few good desserts to dive into. The most famous is the apfelstrudel, hot apples in a thin crust, topped with a rich vanilla cream. It's good when it doesn't go limp on you. Kasekuchen is a nice, frothy Bavarian cheesecake with raspberry sauce, but best of all is eis mit himbeeren, vanilla ice cream with hot raspberries, which is completely delicious.
Oktoberfest runs through October 31 at Hofbrauhaus Las Vegas, during which time there are daily special events, a live band every evening, and a raft of menu specials that change every day.