Featured Restaurant: Radegast Hall & Biergarten

Arthur Bovino — August 24, 2009

Kas Spatzle with Hunter’s Bacon and Brown Cabbage.

A beer garden in Williamsburg could easily be kitschy or precious, but Radegast Hall & Biergarten is neither. Instead, it’s a warm, welcoming space on North 3rd and Berry, that rapidly changing neighborhood between Main Street Williamsburg (Bedford Avenue) and the new waterfront condos.

Stepping inside the warehouse (a project by Slovakian-born partners, Ivan Kohut and Andy Ivanov) is like entering the idea of the beer garden you always had in your mind. The dimly-lit, open-beamed, high ceiling space is filled with wood, booths and a large bar. A second, brick-walled area is filled with picnic tables. You look around half-expecting to see people singing and smashing steins together.

There are twelve beers on draft, mostly German (two Belgian, one Czech) which you can order by pint ($7), liter ($13) or pitcher ($18), and more than 40 bottled beers (23 Belgian, 18 German, one Swedish, one Czech). You’ll find Kriek, Blonde, Pilsener and Lager, Cider, Lambec and gluten-free beer. The great thing about Radegast, besides its atmosphere, the beer, occasional live music and communal ambience is that the food here isn’t an afterthought— it’s quality pub fare prepared by Ivan’s wife, Joanna Kohut.

As at Astoria’s authentic Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden, there is rib-sticking Eastern European fare. Take for example, Goulash, Schnitzel and the crusty-delicious Halusky (known by its German name, Spatzle). Quality smaller plates include the Chicken and Rabbit Liver Pâté and the unmixed Steak Tartare. Also on the menu, is one of New York City’s better soft pretzels.

For those people who enjoy Bohemian Hall and Biergarden for the feeling it gives you of getting out of New York and entering another culture, Radegast is not a substitute. But with Williamsburg’s continued new construction and the increased inhabiting of completed projects, the scruffy, black-rimmed glasses wearing natives and the now-clichéd hipster-haters are going to find themselves in increasing interaction (especially on the L), Radegast Hall & Biergarten is a great setting for them to learn to live together. It’s the kind of place that makes you wonder how the neighborhood survived without it for so long.

See new pictures of food at Radegast Hall & Biergarten on its restaurant page here.

AlwaysLearning: Halušky

Arthur Bovino — July 06, 2009

Halušky at the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens

Halušky is a savory, warm, tangy, rib-sticking dish. It’s a great cool-weather comfort food, but its qualities also just make it great food to eat while drinking beer at any time during the year.

What it is: Halušky are spaetzle-like, irregularly-shaped dumplings usually made with flour, water, egg and often, finely grated potatoes. These small, lumpy dumplings can often be found served with cheese, cabbage, bacon, ham and meat or vegetable stews.

Where it’s from: Eastern Europe. Variations on Halušky can be found prepared in a variety of ways in the cuisines of Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Ukraine. A Slovak rendition, Bryndzové Halušky, is one of the national dishes of Slovakia; it adds sheep’s milk cheese and bacon to potato halušky. Strapačky, a similar Slovak dish, substitutes sauerkraut for sheep’s milk cheese.

Where to get it in New York: The Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden, a fantastic, authentic beer garden in Astoria, Queens run and managed by the Bohemian Citizens Benevolent Society, does a hearty rendition of Halušky with Sauerkraut and Imported Traditional Slovak Sheep’s Cheese.