The Hoffbrau

75 years of steaks on West Sixth Street

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, March 26, 2009

Nobody goes to the Hoffbrau because they have the best steaks in town. There are a hundred reasons to go, but the steaks aren't at the top of the list. They're fine, especially if you like your steaks thin and wide and glistening with so much fat and butter that you can see your reflection, so shimmery that a photo flash bounces right off them. They're fine if you're not particular about rare or medium-rare. They're more than fine if you consider that a lunch special with steak, potatoes and salad costs less than a shrimp cocktail at III Forks. But there's something beyond beef that draws people to this throwback of a tan square storefront along West Sixth Street.

It counts for something that the Hoffbrau has held down the same spot for 75 years without changing much of anything. There's something solid and real about its country diner feel, the way the waitresses recite the menu (because there's no printed one), the metal folding chairs, the orange Formica tables and the wood paneling. On a Friday at lunch, owner Reuben Ray helped us figure out where to park when the meter out front was on the fritz, and he guided us to the side door from his perch at one of the picnic tables on a little covered patio outside, the traffic passing by in waves and drowning out whatever sounds weren't already dampened by the ventilation fan.

Judging from the steaks lining the flat-top grill just a few feet away from the front counter, what people order at the Hoffbrau is the old warhorse T-bone, the status-symbol steak from the days before the ascendancy of filets and New York strips. Every steak in the cartoons from when I was a kid was a T-bone, and it was a big deal if Dad was grilling T-bones on a Sunday night. So I gravitated toward the lunch special that day, a 17-ounce T-bone with potatoes, salad and tea for $19.25. For $14.95, I could have gone with a 13-ounce steak, minus the tea. And we might have picked a rib-eye, a sirloin or, God forbid, a chicken breast, but the spoken menu flew by so quickly in the good-natured cacophony of the full dining room that all we heard clearly was the 7-ounce New York strip for $11.95. The strip came out medium-well, gray in the center though we had asked for medium-rare, but it had more steakhouse flavor (a little char, a little marbled fat flavor melting in the meat) than the T-bone.

All the steak plates at the Hoffbrau come with potatoes, two big wedges fried hard-shell crisp on the outside, starchy-soft on the inside, like a satisfying cross between a french fry and a baked potato. Salads are an extra $3.50. And again, I'm guessing nobody comes here just for that soggy iceberg lettuce with a few olives and tomatoes, though some people come for the garlicky dressing, if the fact that you can buy it by the bottle at the front register is any indication. The onion rings are good, a messy, hand-breaded pile fried greasy, thin and crisp, but you should know that they're five bucks a plate, and it takes no time at all for two people to ring up $44 for lunch. But there was enough food there to feed our 4-year-old, too, and the whole ticket was still less than some of the single steaks at a half-dozen high-end steakhouses.

During one busy lunch shift, a couple from New Jersey was so happy to be at the Hoffbrau that they asked the waitress to take their picture, wide-eyed that they'd discovered one of those locals-only spots that time forgot, something to tell the folks back home about, like we would if we went to Clifton, N.J., and stumbled into the Tick Tock Diner. But the Hoffbrau is where we go to let time pass us by because having the best steaks in town isn't the only way to pick the best steakhouses in town.

msutter@statesman.com; 912-5902

The Hoffbrau

613 W. Sixth St. 472-0822, www.originalhoffbrausteaks.com.

Hours:11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Prices:Steaks $11.95-$21.75. Salads $3.50. Onion rings $5. Daily specials start as low as $8.

Payment:All major cards. No checks.

Bar: The sign says, 'Beer served with food orders only.' The seven bottled choices include Lone Star, Shiner Bock and Dos Equis.

Wheelchair access: Yes.