When you have a meal filled with sour and salty notes, beer is the thing that you want to wash it all down. So, it’s no surprise that the menu at Yellowhead Brewery’s Tasting Room features a lot of classic German dishes: Schnitzels, bratwurst, rustic potato salads and sour red cabbage.
Open weekdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., the small-but-airy room overlooking 105 Street is still one of the best-kept lunchtime secrets in the downtown core. When my dining partner and I arrive, we’re the only customers in the place. We order a couple of light, grainy Yellowhead Lagers and open with a couple of pretzels.
The pretzels are a surprise. They aren’t dense, and not as salty as you’d expect. As flaky and chewy as croissants, they’re served with a homemade mustard that spreads more like butter.
We get a Wiener schnitzel and a bratwurst for our mains. While the schnitzel isn’t the city’s best, it is well prepared, crisp on the outside and not dried-out inside. The bratwurst is served with sauerkraut and more of that mustard. It’s substantial and almost feels like you’re eating a Louisiana-style po’ boy sandwich. The best thing? The potato salad. It’s heavy with mustard and parsley – a good thing – and has a healthy crunch of bacon. It’s salty, with some great pork notes, with those hints of mustard that go right to the nose.
It’ll make you want a beer. And there will be more coming. While the Tasting Room only has Yellowhead on draft right now, it will be adding more Alberta microbrews to its taps, soon. (10229 105 St., 780-423-3333, yellowheadbrewery.ca)
