Description
Like most beer halls - or, more to the point, like Wurstküche downtown - Steingarten has a strong specialty in grilled sausages, the bratwurst and bockwurst and spicy Polish that ease down a strong, hoppy brew. Some of the odd sausages work - the duck and bacon is nice, and so is the wild boar - and others, like the mushy salmon sausage, do not. The lamb sausage, sort of a take on a merguez, is crisp-skinned and delicious; the bland Italian and dry rabbit sausages are beyond the abilities of even a high-alcohol barleywine to fix.
You can get three sausages to a platter if you want to share them with the table, or one in a bun if that's the way you roll. There are sauteed peppers with onions, a rather tart sauerkraut or sweet caramelized onions; sweet-potato fries or fries dusted with parmesan cheese; German potato salad or red cabbage slaw. As is standard at L.A. gastropubs, there is a maximalist burger, a half-pound of grass-fed beef on a big, soft bun, sluiced with things like charred tomatoes, caramelized onion and Brie.
Have a burger. But know that Steingarten exists mostly as a conduit between humanity and beer, at least to that slice of humanity for whom Pint Night exists as more than a concept, the people who become excited rather than terrified when they see the words Experimental Raspberry on a beer list.
