Yesterday, I wrote about my wife and I taking her friend Jess up to Gatlinburg to show her the Smoky Mountains for the first time. Well, in our continued tour of the Volunteer State, we spent the following Saturday down in the Scenic City. It’s our favorite weekend getaway spot – not to take anything away from the majesty of the Smokies, but it helps that we can get down to Chattanooga in about an hour and a half, there’s less traffic, and stuff in general is much cheaper. Throughout the years, my wife and I have found our favorite spots throughout town. While we usually aim to try at least one new spot on every trip down, this time was about the greatest hits. That meant dinner at our favorite spot in town, Brewhaus.
I feel like I say it all the time, but there’s not a spot in Nashville to get good German and German-inspired food. Not since the Gerst Haus closed down, anyway. Brewhaus is nestled over in the Northshore area of Chattanooga. There’s something to be said for a town that is as sleepy at dinnertime as Chattanooga is. I love it. We strolled into Brewhaus with no wait and immediate service. Taking in golden hour from the back deck, we were the only ones crazy enough to brave the heat to do so. But, with fans blowing on us and the sun going down, it was much more manageable than I’d have thought. It was worth it to get those views of Coolidge Park and the way the sunlight bends over the ridge line to splash the tree tops by the river with color. Everyone has to have those spots they can vacate to where the stress just melts off all around them. Walking out to that deck at Brewhaus is one of those spots for me, man.
We approached this meal as if we hadn’t eaten in days and didn’t know when we’d eat again. I mean, seriously…I have no idea what came over us and why we ordered so much food. I made the mistake of getting a large beer (Jackalope Bearwalker on tap) not realizing it would be in a glass that weighed 20 pounds and would be an approximate gallon of beer. That’s an exaggeration, but you get my point. It was the perfect way to start the meal and further lean into the relaxing atmosphere.
To start, we ordered the appetizer sampler. The pretzel and mustard trio is a usual favorite of ours, but we wanted to try something new as well. I’d never even noticed there was a sampler on the menu that had a pretzel, kraut balls, and brat sliders. So, that was the obvious choice. The pretzel delivered as it always does, but the star of that dish is the mustard trio. Personally, I’m a fan of the cherry ale mustard, but the horseradish mustard gives the pretzel some nice pop and does a little clearing out of the sinuses while it’s at it. The trio is rounded out by a cider mustard that gives you several options to mix up how you consume that pretzel. The kraut balls were fantastic – kraut, sausage, and cheese balled up and fried? That’s ball game, folks. I could’ve eaten an entire order of those myself. But, we weren’t done appetizing ourselves with the sampler.
When my wife and I made our first trip down to Brewhaus – I’d say it was probably 2016 or somewhere around then – there was a dish on the appetizer menu called “Bavarian nachos.” In lieu of traditional tortilla chips, potato pancakes served as the base for this dish. Topped heavily with cheese, sour cream, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and sliced smoked sausage, it’s the perfect starter. In recent years, we’ve gone down and noticed that it wasn’t on the menu any longer. Heartbroken, we asked our server about it, and lo and behold, she informed us you could still get the Bavarian nachos off of their “secret” menu. They might not appreciate us outing them on the internet for all to see, so enjoy this paragraph before they send the muscle over to have it removed. I can’t help but wonder what else is on that secret menu, though.
We should’ve stopped there. We could’ve enjoyed a small taste of everything from the appetizer menu, enjoyed our beers, and polished it all off with a beautiful sunset. Instead, we opted to make ourselves miserable. Aura and Jess split an order of spaetzle with German potato salad and kraut as their sides. I actually ate both of their brats while they worked on the garlic-coated egg noodles.
For me, it’s the brewhaha – one brat, one smoked sausage, served on a bed of kraut. I went with the German potato salad and the cabbage as my sides. I love their kraut because it’s not overbearing in the tang department. It’s a wonderful complement to any of their sausage dishes. The German potato salad has the right amount of pop, and serves as a hearty companion to the kraut and sausages. They know how to construct a meal perfectly at Brewhaus. But, the star of the show for me has always been their bier cabbage. Their purple cabbage, sliced and cooked, adds a dynamic to the meal that no other dish provides. It has the slightest bit of sweetness to it.
Together, the flavors combine to make for a meal that isn’t easy to replicate. The complexity of their dishes and the seemingly infinite iterations of how you can combine them all is what I love about the place so much. For more on Brewhaus, check out their website here.
Check out our catalog of travel guides on SoBros Network if you’re looking for some inspiration for your next weekend getaway from Nashville or beyond!
This travel blog is brought to you by Memo’s Mexican Kitchen in Mount Juliet, Tennessee! Memo’s offers a fresh, modern take on the Mexican restaurant just a mile north of I-40 off of the Mount Juliet exit. For my money, they cook up the best quesabirria in town! Check out the full menu on their website and let ’em know SoBros Network sent you.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
SoBros Network and Stacking The Inbox have teamed up for the greatest premium content collaboration in the history of Nashville. Get all of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft coverage you need on top of premium SoBros Network content such as The Movie Review Rewind Podcast, Sports Punch, and much more! Only $5/month gets you instant access to an exhaustive content library of articles, podcasts, and videos created exclusively for our subscribers! Sign up on Substack today!
