Advertisement

Restaurant review: Hofbrauhaus does better with beers, revelry than food

 
A dinner Pork Roast served with potato dumpling with butter bread crumbs, bread and pretzel dumpling, root vegetables with beer gravy at the Hofbrauhaus, St. Petersbrug.
A dinner Pork Roast served with potato dumpling with butter bread crumbs, bread and pretzel dumpling, root vegetables with beer gravy at the Hofbrauhaus, St. Petersbrug.
Published Dec. 15, 2015

ST. PETERSBURG

The father, from New Port Richey, and the son, from South Tampa, have rented a local hotel room for the night so they can imbibe freely, their identical sets of goat-skin lederhosen sprouting matching thickets of chest hair above the embroidered cross piece that spans their suspenders. (Fun fact No. 1: Purchased years ago at Oktoberfest in Munich, the lederhosen are never washed. Never.) At the bar, a bartender doesn't flinch when the bottom drops out of a dimpled liter stein mid-pour, the glass clearly weakened by overly vehement toasting and prosting. In the center of the room a small blond girl twirls and flaps her arms to the oompah version of John Paul Young's Love is in the Air. (Fun fact No. 2: Every Bavarian-style oompah band can and will play Y.M.C.A. and Sweet Caroline as well.)

It's a Wednesday evening at Hofbrauhaus, two weeks into what has thus far been a mind-boggling success. Owner Joe Matuschka, his voice gravelly from too much work and too little sleep, gives the stats: They are 60 percent over sales projections so far; they've had to employ a refrigerated truck outside to run 24 hours a day to house extra food; they've scrambled to hire 30 percent more staff than anticipated.

I sit at the bar and order a Kleiner Feigling. It comes in a tiny glass bottle with googly eyeballs on the label, no glass. Here is how you drink it: Bang the bottle vigorously on the bar; snap off the little purple cap and attach it to the end of your nose; glug the sweet fig-flavored vodka to completion; whoop.

Inside my purse is a Radio Shack sound level meter, one routinely used by the newspaper's sports department to measure the noise of St. Petersburg's Grand Prix. I wander around the vast dining room that once was the Tampa Bay Times' Tramor cafeteria and check the meter. The digital reading hovers around 100 decibels, occasionally tipping up to 110 and 120.

It's all in good fun at Hofbrauhaus. People dance, people sing, people spank each other vigorously with wooden paddles. Waitresses in expensive dirndls spill copious cleavage and one guy trails behind the wandering band smacking spoons rhythmically against his thighs.

But here's the thing about all this fun: It's noisy. Restaurants generally target 85 decibels or lower. The threshold for pain is 130, but protracted periods at 120 decibels or lower can cause permanent damage. (See chart.) I spoke with several servers at Hofbrauhaus who complain that they go home with ringing ears and hoarse voices each evening. Based on my readings, an eight-hour shift at Hofbrauhaus is likely an OSHA infraction. Solution: Invest in a whole lot of earplugs or employ some noise mitigation tools. (Reverberation in a room as big as this can add 15 decibels or more to the noise level.)

Rant over. Now on to the food. Times correspondent Justin Grant did an admirable rundown on the quaffables last week. (His assessment: as authentic as they come; for details go to tampabay.com/food.) On the food side the word is workhorse. I haven't peeked into the kitchen, but I would hazard that there's a schnitzel guy, a couple of wurst technicians, someone who plops the mashed potatoes and someone else on kraut duty. This is high-volume assembly-line food (fitting, given the Tramor's cafeteria roots).

Dig in to Tampa Bay’s food and drink scenes

Dig in to Tampa Bay’s food and drink scenes

Subscribe to our free Taste newsletter

Get the restaurant and bar news, insights and reviews you crave from food and dining critic Helen Freund every Thursday.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

If you've spent time in Germany, dishes like sauerbraten ($19.99 at dinner) will seem more like American pot roast than the tangy real deal. Sausages, from the tender poached weisswurste ($14.99) to the frankfurter-style dogs ($12.99) and the slender roast pork Nurnberger rostbratwurstl ($14.99), are pleasant and hearty without putting anyone in a giddy Teutonic trance.

The kitchen has a heavy hand with the salt, from a gargantuan plate of salted sliced white radish ($11.99, but it's nearly a lifetime supply of radishes) to the sauerkraut that accompanies many dishes or the dill-inflected cuke salad ($5.99), perhaps to boost beer sales. And desserts disappoint with a floppy and misshapen apple strudel imported from Germany ($9.99) and a Black Forest cake ($7.99) that doesn't give a Publix birthday cake much competition (plus, tastes like the garnish is Cool Whip).

Still, once the noise issue has been addressed, I will go back for something beyond a brisk spanking: The wurstsalat ($13.99 at dinner) is a zingy tangle of shaved fleischwurst dotted with slivers of Swiss cheese, onion and pickle, its oil and vinegar dressing bracing, accessorized by lettuce leaves and rye bread and butter. Exotic but homey, as are the bread-based knodeln ($4.99): Imagine if you were to have a snowball fight with Thanksgiving stuffing, compacting for maximum impact and upping the ante by implicating gravy.

Because the restaurant is so new, Matuschka says he won't be doing anything special to celebrate Oktoberfest. Still, this will doubtless be the epicenter of Munich-style revelry in weeks to come. (Fun fact No. 3: Amazon has a good deal on Hearos earplugs.)

Contact Laura Reiley at lreiley@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2293. Follow @lreiley on Twitter. She dines anonymously and unannounced; the Times pays all expenses.