BY MEG VAN HUYGEN
For a decade, Berliner Beerhall was kind of a punchline in downtown Tacoma. At South 24th and Pacific, the banner reading “BERLINER GERMAN BEER HALL: Coming Soon” on the facade of the boarded-up old Neener’s Pub space went up in late 2013, and as the months stretched into years, and later the pandemic, I think we all assumed the project had been abandoned. Had the owners run out of money? Was the building simply cursed?
Not long after the Berliner finally opened in 2023, a full ten years after owners Dennis and Lydia Mascarinas purchased the historic 1927 building, I stopped in for a beer one rainy night to kill some time. It was pretty dead. I’m not really a beer guy myself, but I had one of those nice banana-y Hefeweissbiers and chilled at the bar. The space is massive, with a liquor shelf ladder, various split-level seating sections, and more than one wall lined with wooden cubbies for people’s personal beer steins. I remembered a menu of sausages and burgs. Plus, they have one of those fire tables where everyone sits around a live flame.
Clearly, I was doing it wrong. Seems like a place you bring a whole posse, not to hunch over your phone at the bar in your rain-soaked hair and drink solo. But I mean, sure. Note to self: Go back to the Berliner, ideally with at least one other person, and try the food.
Well, appropriately, the months stretched into years on that note, too. It was a pure fluke that brought me and my boyfriend there on Saturday, after nosing around a nearby new opening that was not … for me. After enduring a couple of overpriced mainstream beers and some very gigantic soccer matches, we were hungry, and this place’s menu just was not it. I admit, it took some marketing skills to convince my boyfriend to get pumped about German food, but I eventually succeeded by pointing out that we wouldn’t need to re-park if we just went across the street.
Spoiler alert: It was killer. Superfantastisch, as my German piano teacher used to say. We were so happy.
Around 6 p.m. on a Saturday, the party at the Berliner was just getting started, as we helped the cavernous space slowly fill up. There was a big convivial group at the fire table. We took seats at the bar to get a good look at the liquor, my first love, no shade to beer, while my guy, an actual beer person, ordered a Bavarian doppelbock by Ayinger Brewing. I selected a Hubert Spritz from the cocktail list, made with fig liqueur, white wine, muddled mint, and a splash of soda water for fizz. Both fabulous. Off to a great start.
A quick eyeballing of the Berliner’s menu revealed that it was pretty well-appointed. I think I’d only read one side of this menu on that first visit. Turns out, they’ve always had a full complement of German classics in addition to the sammies and glizzies. (Does a currywurst count as a glizzy?)It’s an impressive roster, honestly, loaded with all manner of schnitzels and spätzle.
We decided to share something, and Stephen liked the idea of the mini pork shanks, which came with what seemed like enough food for two big, tall people like us. Still, I couldn’t resist adding a side of the pommes mit curry ketchup, with “Onkel Henning’s Cologne-style” sauce. Too charming. He one-upped me and added the Bier und Käse Suppe: beer cheese soup, made with dark Köstritzer Schwarzbier and topped with a cheesy sourdough toast. Okay, getting excited here.
When offered the choice of yet another side to accompany our pork shanks, we went with a scoop of warm, bacony German potato salad. The entrees also come with braised red cabbage and a dinner plate full of either Caesar or green salad. We picked green, made with arugula, cranberries, slivered carrots, and blue cheese crumbles, all dressed with a basil vinaigrette. It was too much food, but we did not care.
It could’ve just been that we were really hungry, but whew, every item that arrived was a new wave of absurd pleasure. The beer cheese soup was super velvety smooth, and the crusty toast with melted sharp cheddar on top gave it a wonderful texture as it slowly sank down into the cheesy morass. The green salad was huge and flavorful and loaded with tasty little goodies. The skinny blond fries arrived with a little cuppy apiece of Heinz ketchup and that housemade curry ketchup, served warm, in the style of mozzarella sticks and marinara. So many complicated spices in that housemade ketchup! A bunch of the warm Indian spices were detected: fenugreek, cumin, coriander, ginger, and some mysteries, too. When I asked the server what they put in the ketchup, she said, “I’m gonna be honest with you … it’s a secret.”
As for the main, the pork shanks themselves were like turbocharged double-wide baby back ribs. The bones slid out effortlessly when we picked them up. They’re as rich and succulent as pork ribs, too, and the Berliner serves them in a blackberry-rum-horseradish glaze: very light, not too sweet or spicy, just a little tang. Somehow, we defied our extreme greed and managed to take a whole shank home to turn into some Bavarian tacos for a midnight snack.
The drinks were perfect, too. We can’t wait to come back and demolish the rest of this menu. We talked about this meal all week.
As for the backstory behind the Berliner coming to us later rather than sooner, well, the answer lies within the building itself. It needed a ton of work. Having been vacant for at least six years before the Mascarinas bought it, the old brick building proved to be full of expensive surprises. Renovation after renovation uncovered structural issues that required redesigns and spendy repairs, all of which needed additional permits. The building was stripped nearly to its studs to install modern seismic upgrades, including a huge underground support structure to serve as a new skeleton to the nearly century-old building. It took a minute.
In March 2020, after seven years of construction, Berliner Beerhall quietly opened its doors. Just days later, restaurants across Washington were required to shut down due to the quick spread of COVID-19. The Mascarinas laid off their fresh new staff and boarded up the windows again. Supply-chain disruptions made it impossible to import the German beers that were central to their concept, and a business built around long communal tables and live music must have seemed like an extinct business model from some ancient civilization.
Despite the long and pricey delays, the couple was committed to preserving the building’s character and keeping the look traditional: exposed brick walls, timber beams, soaring ceilings, oversized windows. For some reason, they never abandoned their vision of creating an authentic German beer hall modeled after the neighborhood brauhauses they’d come to love while living in Germany, essentially creating a grand, 7,300-square-foot version of their gemütlich, or cozy, pub on Renton’s Main Avenue. They finally got their wish in late 2023, celebrating the Berliner Beerhall’s long-awaited opening with a huge Bavarian beer bash. It was a huge milestone for the Mascarinas, who also opened the Berliner Pub in downtown Renton in 2011, and expected its sister project in Tacoma to take maybe two or three years but not consume a decade of their lives.
The context adds some real gravitas to my whimsical meal last weekend, and it makes me want to hang out at the Berliner and support this triumph all the more. Kinda can’t believe they stuck it out, but I’m sure grateful they did. I may not have been a beer guy when I got there last weekend, but damn, feels like I’m about to become one.
