If you’re coming to Radegast, you better leave your noodle-arms at home. The beers go about 20-25 pounds and the raucous atmosphere will have you raising it to your face over and over again in short order. I mean, who needs a gym when you have the massive glass monoliths you see to your left? And having last seen the inside of a gym sometime around the turn of the millennium, I was having issues even heaving this thing up to my thirsty-ass maw. No matter; I summoned my inner Thor and raised that stein like a mighty hammer and slayed that f’ing Gaffel Kolsch in like 47 gulps. And during that time I might have talked a lot to both the folks I was with, and the girls sitting next to us, and several middle aged folks who were clearly enjoying themselves. What they were doing in hipster Brooklyn is beyond me. Visiting their children perhaps? In any case, I sat there with my mouth open (even when not imbibing) just looking around at the medieval looking hall of long tables and benches and the giant, warehouse-sized room next door with its insane bar and chandeliers. All while smelling what I can only assume were mouth-watering burgers and brats at the giant grill. In my joy, I exclaimed, “I think this is my new favorite place.” And it was. Our friends who live around the corner said they like it so much they’d be coming in the next morning for brunch — which is apparently another of their specialties. Finally it was time for our coach to change back into a pumpkin and we begrudgingly beat our way through, oddly, throngs of young Asian folks in the front of the joint and out into Brooklyn night. And I with the realization that the biergarten and its communal approach is probably the way humans were meant to drink beer. [MF]
113 N 3rd St., Brooklyn
718/963-3973
radegasthall.com
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