Gerhard's ~ Roanoke, Texas ***CLOSED***

First visit: Feb 2010

For regular readers of the RJG, and given my light posting, I cannot imagine there's too many of those - you might remember my thoughts on the lack of German food in the DFW area. I truly feel it's a somewhat ignored regional food tradition. Here's more info on my feelings around this.

So now us folks in NE Tarrant can crow about our own German restaurant. Well, OK, technically not NE Tarrant, but we'll adopt Roanoke for the cause.

Gerhard's is a brand new restaurant in what is shaping up to be a very cool "old town" Roanoke. Thanks to the success of Babe's and the Classic Cafe, many flock to the quaint old one-horse train stop that has now become a desirable suburb of the vast DFW area. They're still in the process of recreating the town that never was, and doing a darn good simulation of such. The Dallas burger institution Twisted Root has been an early adopter (and we went on New Year's Day - it's excellent - and will report eventually on it). And so now is Gerhard's, who has moved into one of the new buildings with an older looking exterior. The interior is exactly what I'd expect a new place in Hamburg to look like - light textured woods, open spacing, sleek contemporary dining arrangements, and a bar option with a flat paneled television screen no doubt showing European soccer when they have a chance. So, sure, it's not an old musty beer cellar. You can't create a place like that - it must evolve as such.

The Mrs. and I split a couple of plates. She kind of went "man diet" probably to please me, and you can't have a better wife than that. So a plate of Wiener Schnitzel and a trio sausages arrived with sweet corn, fries, potato salad, and a large soft chewy pretzel. The Wiener Schnitzel is excellent. A perfectly seasoned fried pork cutlet spread across the plate. They cook it the German way, without dumping some gross sweet sauce all over it. The three sausages are 1 bratwurst (yum), 3 frankfurters (yummer) and 2 Nürnberger Rostbratwursts (yummest). The sweet corn is superb, as were the potato salad and fries (simple thin ones, just as in Germany).

Wash that down with a couple Warsteiner Dunkel's in a frozen mug, and we have a winner here folks.

With a menu that has other mouth watering temptations such as Cordon Bleu, Bratwurst Sliders, Fried Bologna sandwiches (hard to find outside of the Midwest regions of America), Roanoke Schnitzel (chicken schnitzel), and Goulash - I sense this is a place we'll be going to for a long time.
If German food is your thing, or if you've just never thought to try it, now is the time. I'm really rooting hard for Gerhard's, as I think the possibilities are endless here.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

2/27/10 (new entry)

Chimy's Cerveceria ~ Texas chain : Fort Worth

An excellent guest post from a regular reader, we never did make it here. They're still going strong with 4 locations across Texas including the below review (Fort Worth), along with Lubbock, College Station, and San Marcos. Basically college towns seem to be their market.

Since the RJG cannot seem to get out of his rut of not posting, we are glad to announce that we have our first guest post! Joe Thomas runs The Grapevine TX Online website. Thanks Joe for the contribution!

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Originally based out of Lubbock Texas, Chimy's Cerveceria came to Fort Worth several years ago and has been serving up some of the strongest margarita's in town ever since. Their location is really just an alley behind a strip mall on the west side of Fort Worth. If this place doesn't look, smell, and feel like a Regular Joe's type place then nothing does.

It is probably easiest to start with the margarita's which happen to be
named after automobiles. You can get anything from the Cadillac (most popular) to the Porsche or Ferrari or many others. I upgraded to the Porsche and it did not disappoint. The Porsche was huge and even though I do not tend to think of myself as a lightweight I only needed one to do the trick.

The food was very basic tex-mex. Your choices range from nachos to quesadillas to "gut rockets" which are their version of chimichangas. I decided to go with the chicken fajita nachos which were enormous. You could easily feed two people here. At a $6.99 price point, the nachos tasted exactly like what you think you would get for $6.99 fajita nachos. But after finishing about half of my margarita, I enjoyed the nachos very much. Maybe this was because half my body was numb.

The wife tried one of the "gut rockets" being that she love chimichangas. She thought it was pretty good, but not great. Again at a price point of about 5 bucks, perhaps her expectations should have been tempered a bit.

Chimy's has a huge patio area with a bunch of large screen televisions for watching sports. They also tend to play good music especially if you are into the Texas country music scene.

For a Regular Joe's type place, Chimy's rates high in my book. You get margarita's that will knock your socks off and you get decent Mexican food that is very favorably priced. Go for the scene and margarita's.

About the author: While not filling himself with margarita's and nachos, Joe Thomas spends his time writing for his website about Grapevine, Texas.

2/6/10 (new entry)