Midtown Lunch

I love stuffing my face with a good sausage just as much as the next guy, but I could take or leave the new tube meat craze that seems to be sweeping through L.A. over the past year. Don’t get me wrong… if Hot Doug’s expanded to L.A. I would probably advise my friends and family to sell any stock they held in my health insurance company (after all, duck fat fries every Friday and Saturday are probably not good for your long term health.)  As a resident of Culver City I’m mildly excited about Wurstkuche expanding to Venice, but the opening of Wirtshaus on La Brea brought a major yawn, that is until I saw their lunch menu.

If you’re a fan of the site you’ve figured out by now that $10 is my lunching limit, but the price isn’t necessarily as important as how the place feels value-wise.  Midtown Lunching is about places that you’d pay for every single day without giving it a second thought, as opposed to the place you go to only on Fridays as a lunchtime splurge.  And even though Wirtshaus had all the makings of a Friday splurge (beer garden on La Brea serving up authentic German cuisine?) its lunch menu reads like a place that wants you to feel like its cheap, rather than just fair.

For $8 you can get a traditional sausage or a chicken sausage with a pickle plus any two sides, including potato salad, fried potatoes, french fries, cucumber salad, sauerkraut or red cabbage.  The french fries were just ok, the fried potatoes were definitely better (you might say the secret ingredient is bacon.)

The spicy sausage is $9, and has a good bit of heat.

There’s also a schnitzel sandwich for $8 that is kind of massive.  You only get one side with this bad boy, but that’s fine because it’s probably the most food out of anything on the menu.  It was hard to taste the pork schnitzel underneath the sauerkraut and red cabbage, and the crust turned pretty mushy pretty quickly, but all in the all the sandwich was tasty.  And if you don’t like all the nonsense, you can always order the meat as a platter with two sides for $10.

I didn’t see spaetzle or dumplings as sides on the lunch menu, which was a bummer, but the sides and mustards were good enough.  In fact everything is just good enough- aka nothing will blow you away with its awesomeness, but if you are a fan of simple German pub food you’ll leave happy.

My favorite thing on the menu might be the weisswurst ($8) which isn’t even one of the lunch specials menu, but  is available off the appetizer menu and still clocks in at under $10. The mild veal sausage is not only tasty, but it comes with the customary soft pretzel, which was totally delicious dipped in the mustard.  Sitting at the bar or the outdoor patio with this and a stein of beer might be the perfect lunch.

THE + (What somebody who likes this place would say)

• Screw fancy sausages. I love simple German food, and this stuff is the real deal.
• Everything on the lunch menu is under $10!
• That weisswurst and pretzel is pretty fantastic.  (If it came with one side it would be perfect!)
• The schnitzel sandwich is huuuuge

THE – (What somebody who doesn’t like the place would say)

• The sausages and sides are solid, but nothing is remarkable.
• The pork schnitzel is not the best I’ve ever had, and it gets soggy pretty quickly in the sandwich
• I’m so sick of sausages!  Enough already…

Wirtshaus, 345 N. La Brea Ave., 323-931-9291