Catfish dinner $8.50
Salmon salad $12.99
Goulash $12.75
Reuben $9.50
If the recent invitation to celebrate the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby with mint juleps and Kentucky Hot Browns at Gerst Haus seemed incongruous with dining in a Bavarian-style tavern, consider this bit of history: Exactly a century ago, a horse named Donau won the Run for the Roses, and that horse was owned by Nashville-based brewer William Gerst. Coming from a long line of German bier men, Gerst manufactured amber under his family name on Sixth Avenue South until Prohibition. After his death, Gerst's family resurrected the brand in 1955 in the form of a German-style beer hall on Second Avenue. Gerst Haus moved to Woodland Street in 1970 and relocated on the same corridor in 2000 after LP Field commandeered property on the East Side.
These days, the third incarnation of Gerst Haus has finally earned the endearing patina of a restaurant that has served a decade worth of beer and fried food. But a visit to the stone-clad Bavarian lodge proves that Gerst Haus is much more than a purveyor of bratwurst and brew. This cheery, beery Nashville tradition offers a range of cuisine that first-time guests will find almost as surprising as the family-friendly atmosphere.
If you thought the Gerst Haus was exclusively the purview of hard-boiled journalists and politicos rubbing elbows, chugging "fishbowls" and gnawing on pig knuckles, it's time to take a new look — at least from a different angle. While there is indeed a rustic, masculine vibe in the wood-and-stone accented bar, where taxidermy and equine racing memorabilia govern the design aesthetic and heavy stemmed glasses slosh with Gerst amber (now manufactured by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company), other aspects of the establishment appeal to younger and — dare we say — more feminine tastes. For example, you could have knocked us over with a Valkyrie feather when we saw a seared tuna salad on the chalkboard menu, alongside schweine schnitzel, spaetzle and kasseler rippchen. The healthy-sounding combination of tuna and salad greens was tempting, but as long as "Roll Out the Barrel" was bouncing around the room in a three-count tempo, we opted to stick with the Old World favorites.
For a real taste of Middle Europe, look no further than goulash, an unpretentious stew of beef in rich brown gravy, served over tender spaetzle. Bobbing with glassy onions and whole plump mushrooms, the heaping plate comes with griddle-bronzed corn cakes that give Gerst Haus away as the sister restaurant to Sportsman's Grille, also owned by brothers Jim and Jerry Chandler.
The sausage sampler arrived with a muscular platter of sliced and grilled tubes, including bratwurst, kielbasa, smoked mett ring and knockwurst. (With such a showcase of salty, smoky meats, we hoped for a more thoughtful selection and presentation of mustards than the simple squeeze bottle on the table.) The unadorned sausage selection came with slices of dark rye bread and a choice of side. Ten times out of 10, we would choose the German potato salad, a warm medley of sliced red-skin potatoes with a delicate balance of sweetness and tang.
The family ties between Gerst and Sportsman's Grille are strong, and much of the latter's menu appears at Gerst, including fried catfish, ribeye and crab cakes. In an unexpected detour from Bavaria to the Bayou, we enjoyed the blackened catfish — sweet flaky fillets sanded with Cajun spices — served with a cup of brazen-hot crawfish sauce along the lines of étouffée.
Our most dazzling meal was the platter of quail. Branded with grill marks and splayed across the plate like miniature saddles, the tiny birds yielded generous amounts of tender smoky meat with a hint of sweetness, and offered a welcome respite from standard chicken.
After being so pleasantly surprised by the deft handling of the quail, we ventured to order the seared tuna salad on a subsequent visit. While we assumed that our high-maintenance request for rare seared fish would go wholly ignored, the tuna arrived precisely as we had asked: cool, jewel-toned purple, delicately grazed by the cooking surface. Unfortunately, the kitchen was less light-handed with the salt rub, which was inedibly thick. Furthermore, such sumptuous fish deserved better accoutrements than the black olive rings that adorned the Niçoise-style mélange of greens, hard-boiled egg and roasted red pepper.
But if you're dining on Friday or Saturday night, when house band The Musik Meisters pound out a Bohemian polka or an accordion-embellished version of "Mack the Knife," you might overlook the finer points of the tuna. Especially if you get caught up in a multigenerational conga line circling the room — past the model train and the oompah band — and flapping arms in the Chicken Dance (bock, bock, bock, bock). That's when you realize you can get seared tuna almost anywhere these days, but a barrel of fun like dinner at Gerst Haus ... that's hard to come by.
Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
