Oklahoma City’s newish incarnation of Tulsa’s Fassler Hall is one of those in-between places where a table full of lads in North Face vests can cozy up to a bearded, flannel-bedecked troupe of gents and no one seems out of place. The endlessly long community tables certainly propagate all-encompassing togetherness as Bier steins are swilled and Schweinefleisch is torn. But there’s no need to brush up on your German for this virtual visit to the Fatherland; eating at Fassler is a firmly American experience, right down to the NBA games plastered on every flat screen, and the fare it offers from across the Atlantic should be comfortably familiar to most.
They do a hell of a job with bratwurst. The sausage sampler is a great chance to tick three brats off of Fassler’s respectable list in one fell swoop. On the sampler, dogs are served plain — there’s no bun in sight — with a side of tangy sauerkraut and gourmet mustard. If you order them à la carte, they come in a bun. If you like spicy stuff and don’t mind cross-pollinating your German dinner with flavors from south of the border, the jalapeño cheddar will meet your need, and if you want to love/hate yourself, order the habañero chicken. It burns so good. The hunter, a smoked venison brat, is another fine pick, but it didn’t particularly stand out to me. Lamb sausage, a falafel dog, and a couple of other options round out the brat menu. All sausages are made in-house. You can also order them grill-ready, to-go, by the pound.
Spring for the duck fries. It’s a paper bag filled with damp, delicious cuts of fried potato with a surprising deficit of salt, but, believe me, they don’t need it. They’re deep fried in duck fat, and if you want a gold membership, throw down an extra dollar for a side of smoked Gouda cheese sauce.
At Fassler, there are plenty of routes to go if you need to get Gouda cheese into your body as fast as possible. The schnitzel sandwich is a great riff on a classic, placing a crispy patty of hand-breaded, deep-fried pork loin between two pieces of German rye with house mustard and a slice of that king of smoked cheeses. The schnitzel itself was a bit drier than I prefer. No points lost, however, because I still had my side of Gouda sauce to dip it in, and that made up for it. There’s a chicken variation, served on a bun with lettuce and tomato, Gouda, and spicy mayo. There’s also a kraut burger (yes, there’s Gouda on that as well), big soft pretzels, potato pancakes with apple sauce, chilled Brussels sprout salad, and a house salad with an option to add lamb, rotisserie chicken or falafel.
Brunch is Saturday and Sunday until 3 p.m., and it’s an array of breakfast tacos, biscuits and waffles. All sausages (excluding the sampler) are half price 10 p.m.-1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. Restaurants that serve food after midnight are still relatively scant in this town, so add this one to your arsenal.
Let’s talk about the beer: All of the usual suspects are here. They have 15 German/Euro beers on tap. You can opt for the sensible half-liter, or dive into a couple of memory-erasing full liters. There are almost 20 bottled beers — great stuff from Germany and elsewhere on the globe, including local Anthem brews. Slinging a giant glass of the stuff to your mouth, you can’t help but feel like it’s Oktoberfest.
It’s a lively place. The mammoth beer hall gets packed, and the adjacent biergarten must be the biggest patio in the city. Large and open with a roaring fire pit, the view of our Devon-spiked cityscape won’t let you forget where you are. Conversely, this beautiful backdrop is a celebration of it. If you want to feel like you’ve stepped into Bavaria, there are better places around Oklahoma City for that. But if you want to get your German fix in Midtown, and maybe watch the Thunder trounce the bad guys while you’re at it, then Fassler Hall is the place.
