A fried bologna sandwich at Künstler Brewing in San Antonio’s Lone Star District is made with German leberkäse, lettuce, pickles honey mustard and potato chips. Side options include french fries.
Rating: Worth a drive
In Germany, two dots over a vowel can change both the pronunciation and the meaning of a word. In San Antonio, the two dots symbolize how Künstler Brewing changed my notion of what a neighborhood brewery can accomplish.
The beer part I get. Künstler head brewer and German native Vera Deckard, who opened the brewery in 2017 with her husband, Brent Deckard, saw her operation hit No. 2 on my Express-News colleague Chuck Blount’s list of Top 10 breweries in San Antonio this year.
I agree with that ranking, and it was reinforced last week by housemade beers that included a smooth Vienna lager, a mellow hefeweizen, a brazen brown ale, a great big doppelbock and a Mexican lager that is like beer’s answer to café de olla.
But this is 52 Weeks of Sandwiches, and we’re not here to talk about beer. Not entirely. Because Künstler steers the conversation toward food seven days a week.
Not just beer snacks and pretzels — it has those, and they’re good — but sandwiches that speak the language of beer, whichever mother tongue a particular beer might speak. And wherever that language might be spoken: at the long wooden bar, at the tavern tables inside or on the breezy covered deck within earshot of the train tracks that bisect the Lone Star District.
READ MORE: Chuck Blount’s Top 10 San Antonio breweries
Sandwiches at Künstler Brewing in San Antonio’s Lone Star District include, clockwise from top left, a Reuben, fried bologna, schweinebraten and a shrimp roll.
Best sandwich: My mom made fried bologna when I was a kid. I loved it then, and I love it now as part of Künstler’s fried bologna sandwich ($15). But this is different: feathered slices of the German luncheon loaf called leberkäse, crispy at the edges with salt and fat in equal measure all the way through. It was piled on thick toasted bread dressed with honey mustard, shredded lettuce, good pickles and — get this — potato chips. Not on the side but piled on. Fried bologna wasn’t the only thing I put on sandwiches as a kid, and the crunch took me right back to my mom’s kitchen.
All sandwiches at Künstler come with a side of kraut salad, a green-and-purple toss of arugula and cabbage, lightly dressed. You can upgrade to potato salad, french fries or soup for an extra charge. The fries were the best for $2 more, as crispy and hot as a craft burger bar’s fries. I wish I’d saved the extra $4 I spent on the soporific black bean soup that had no idea what it was doing at a German brewery.
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A schweinebraten sandwich at Künstler Brewing in San Antonio’s Lone Star District is made with smoked pork loin,kraut salad, onions and brown mustard on a sourdough bun. Side options include potato salad.
Other sandwiches: A brewery that takes the trouble to smoke pork loin for its schweinebraten sandwich ($14) is a brewery that knows how well pork goes with beer. A silky hefeweizen and a sandwich made with crisscross layers of thinly sliced pork, kraut salad, sweet caramelized onions and brown mustard? That works.
Künstler’s version of a Reuben ($17), made with warm pastrami, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Thousand Island dressing wasn’t piled like a deli condominium. Instead, it found a way to balance the right amount of salty, smoky meat to keep the sandwich juicy and cohesive on thin rye bread without falling apart. Künstler cures and smokes its own pastrami, and if this whole brewery thing doesn’t work out, it has a future in deli meat.
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Kunstler Brewing is a pub, brewery and restaurant in San Antonio’s Lone Star District.
Housemade beer offerings include a four-beer flight and a tall stein of Wolfie Vienna lager at Künstler Brewing in San Antonio’s Lone Star District.
Sandwiches include a shrimp roll on a pretzel bun with a side of soup at Künstler Brewing in San Antonio’s Lone Star District.
Sandwiches include warm pastrami on rye bread with sauerkraut, mustard, Swiss cheese and Thousand Island dressing at Künstler Brewing in San Antonio’s Lone Star District.
Künstler Brewing is a pub, brewery and restaurant in San Antonio’s Lone Star District.
So far, all this salt, fat and smoke sound about right for sandwiches at a brewery. But that’s when Künstler stepped in with something more at home on the American coast than the Bavarian mountains. The shrimp roll ($16) came dressed with a little mayo, a little herb and a little celery for crunch. And that’s all, because the shrimp needed no help, a generous payload of curled, coral meat with a resilient bounce and fresh, briny sweetness. Scooped into a stout pretzel bun with a heart of gold, it could hold its own against a lobster roll, without the lobster roll price tag.
msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking
Location: 302 E. Lachapelle, 210-688-4519, kuenstlerbrewing.com
Hours: 2-10 p.m. Monday; noon-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; noon-11 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday
Mike Sutter is the Express-News restaurant critic. Before joining the Taste Team in 2016, he served as restaurant critic for the Austin American-Statesman and editor of FedManWalking.com. He’s appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” ABC’s “To Tell the Truth” and written for The Guardian, Bon Appetit and The Wall Street Journal.