Beyond the Biergarten at METZGER, VIRGINIA CHEF BRITTANNY ANDERSON GIVES GERMANIC FLAVORS THEIR PROPER DUE

in FORK the ROAD BY JOHN T. EDGE Beyond the Biergarten AT METZGER, VIRGINIA CHEF BRITTANNY ANDERSON GIVES GERMANIC FLAVORS THEIR PROPER DUE renner Pass, the second Richmond restaurant from the chef Brittanny Anderson and her team, projects a Teutonic warehouse vibe. Chairlift, the adjacent coffee and pastry shop, channels an Austrian ski lodge. Be- B ginning here in the pretend Alps, An- derson wends her way across Europe. Mace-perfumed sausages ref- erence the Savoy region of France. Spanish sherries get more play than Chardonnay. That Eurocentric conceit works. But before we go deep, schnitzel of battered and fried veal, pre- Clockwise from I should tell you that Ander- sented with creamed oyster mushrooms top left: Metzger’s son’s best restaurant is her and a thicket of vinaigrette-glossed arugu- Orchard House cock- tail includes apple first: Metzger Bar & Butchery, la. And, yes, the by-the-glass list features brandy and black a brick-fronted café across mostly German and Austrian wines. But walnut bitters; bottles town in Union Hill. For lack of Metzger is less a German tribute restau- of German and a good label, I’ll call Metzger rant than a restaurant that accords Ger- Austrian wine; Germanish and tell you that manic food the respect it deserves though roasted chicken with creamed sauerkraut; it’s a singular restaurant in a rarely gets. chef Brittanny Ander- moment when those are few. American foreign policy, good and ill, son. Left: Wiener Dinner at Metzger conjures shapes which restaurants Americans fre- schnitzel with jus. a scene in which Anderson quent. Relatively few Afghan restaurants combed vinyl at a used record thrive here. (Baltimore, where Helmand store, bopped her head to leads the pack, is a grand exception.) Al- songs that others ignored, and emerged to say that though pho shops and bánh mi cafés now necklace the Trans-Europe Express, the 1977 Kraftwerk album, is Gulf Coast, they were few before the fall of Saigon. The worth another listen, and Käsekrainer, a smoked sau- ascent and decline of German restaurants, in the years sage larded with Emmentaler cheese, is worth another before and after the world wars, tracks a comparable bite. About the latter, she’s right. geopolitical path. Anderson’s reliance on German goods and inspi- During the nineteenth century, Germans were rations defines Metzger. Witness her crisp Wiener the largest immigrant group in America. The wheeze PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATE THOMPSON GARDEN&GUN OCT. / NOV. 2018 65 JUBILEE and bellow of contemporary Tejano ac- that served blackened tilapia and shall cordion music shows that influence. And remain nameless. Dinner at Metzger con- chicken-fried steak is just Wiener schnit- firms my prejudice. Anderson and her team zel in a denim apron. Step beyond the focus on doing something well. Some thing. Frankfurt-lent-its-name-to-frankfurters Not every thing. “I like working within a narrative, and abiding linkages to our cook- box,” Anderson told me. “The question is, ing unwind. how much can I do within that box?” “I started out thinking of it as a beer hall Plenty. Order scallops instead of that situation,” Anderson, a Richmond native sexy schnitzel, and fat porcelain disks who previously cooked at Blue Hill at Stone with a cast-iron char arrive in a tumble of Barns in New York and the Roosevelt here, pickled raisins. The natural sweetness of told me. “But I just couldn’t stop myself. I the raisins plays well against the pucker of fell in love with taking weird old German vinegar. With each puncture of a fork tine ideas and making them new again.” or draw of a knife blade, a sweet and sour Metzger reflects a bit of that beer hall sauce forms on the plate and begs you to aesthetic. The space, which opened in draw a hunk of shellfish through it. 1892 as a grocery, begat a shoe store and For a Germanish restaurant, Metzger morphed into a gambling hall and then a actually excels at vegetable cookery and church commissary before Anderson and assembly. Consider the carrot salad of thin her partners, Nathan Conway and Brad orange ribbons tossed with tots of crab. Hemp, planted their flag in Union Hill, Better yet, order the wurst salad, adrift on once home to meatpacking companies a puddle of beer cheese, bobbed with coins and tanneries. of garlicky knockwurst, and haystacked The bones of that grocery show in the with crisp kohlrabi batons. The sausage is shotgun room, flanked by a white-subway- hot, the kohlrabi is cold. Pretzel shrapnel tile-backed bar. Butchery woodcuts line sounds like Pop Rocks in your mouth. the walls. A map of Munich, rescued from Mushrooms, shaved into irregular nubs, some epoch past, dangles on a string along- get a beer batter that recalls tempura. A side. Pewter platters, mounted at eye level, rye-bread-bound aioli pools at the bottom evoke European tavern service and refract of the bowl. Forget all those fern-bar fried and diffuse light. mushrooms you’ve dunked into ranch. The bar displays all the right bottles. Yel- This redeems the form. And begs the low, green, and very old green Chartreuse question, How did everyone else get this stand tall. Stroh, an Austrian rum cousin, so very wrong? looms among shelves stacked with beer Every great night must end. Instead of glasses. When I ask for a tout, bartender succumbing to a chocolate torte infused Rachel Boxley recommends a Schlenkerla with cardamom, I note a sling of Under- Helles Lagerbier. Made with oak-smoked berg minis hanging from a shelf like a hops, it tastes like a ham sandwich on sour- bandolier. A nod in that direction gets dough rye. And it pairs beautifully with me a brown-paper-sheathed bottle of the my schnitzel. German digestif, green cap untwisted, Speaking of schnitzel, the menu is suc- served upside down in an elegant stemmed cinct, usually six appetizers and six to eight glass. The slogan on the label reads like a entrees. Short menus are trustworthy promise: “After a good meal, to feel bright menus. I learned that in a barbecue joint and alert.” G It would be premature since 1955, it had been Birmingham, serving Going to claim that a German famous for bratwurst, salt-jeweled pretzels, restaurant renais- hot potato salad, and schnitzel fingers with Deutsch sance is at hand. schooners of beer. honey mustard, A new Birmingham Reality is more of a Then, in April, Brät and currywurst outpost raises the bar seesaw. Earlier this Brot, a contempo- with curry ketchup on a brat and a beer year, the Gerst Haus rary biergarten with that remind diners of in Nashville closed. a marble Ping-Pong the promise of Ger- A politico hang, open table, opened in manish eats.—J.T.E..

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