This Festive Texas Restaurant Serves the Largest Schnitzels in the State and Feels Like Bavaria

I have a firm rule about schnitzel: it should be a little too big for its plate. If those golden edges are not hanging over the rim, someone got timid in the kitchen, and I take that personally.

I have ordered a lot of schnitzel over the years. Most of it plays it safe, thin and tidy and gone from memory by the time I reach the parking lot. Every so often, though, one arrives that makes you sit up straight.

One Texas restaurant refuses to be timid. Since 1993, the Bavarian Grill in Plano has served what it proudly calls the largest schnitzels in the state, each one a pounded, breaded sheet of crisp buttery gold that spills past the edge of the plate.

It has the trophies to back up the bragging. Below, we will dig into the schnitzel, the sausages, the wild game, the wall of personalized steins, and the German family behind one of the most decorated Bavarian kitchens in the country.

Start With the Giant Pretzel

Before the main event, do yourself a favor and order the giant Bavarian pretzel. It arrives soft and warm, roughly the size of a steering wheel, with a salt-flecked crust that makes you glad you skipped lunch.

Feeding a table? The sampler platter is the move. It stacks smoked salmon, Gouda, Landjäger sausage, chicken breast, and an assortment of Bavarian charcuterie and hams onto one board that keeps everyone busy while you debate the entrees.

There is also a spicy goulash soup, built from beef, pork, paprika, onions, and peppers, and hearty enough to stand on its own as a meal.

On a cold Texas night, and we do get a few, it is the perfect warm-up before the frying begins. Ask for extra bread to mop the bowl clean, because you will absolutely want to.

The Schnitzel That Feels Like a Trip to Munich

Now the star. A proper schnitzel is a cutlet pounded thin, breaded, and pan-fried until the crust shatters like glass. Done right, it needs no sauce, no garnish, and no introduction. It just needs a fork.

The house favorite since day one is the Schnitzel Wiener Art, the classic Viennese style, served simply with warm herbed potato salad and a lemon wedge. The restaurant calls itself “the home of the largest Schnitzels in Texas.”

That is a bold thing to claim in a state that measures everything in acres. You can order yours in veal or pork, and dress it up however you like.

The Jäger schnitzel arrives under a deep, earthy mushroom and wine sauce. The Rahm schnitzel gets a lighter blanket of cream. Add spaetzle, those tiny hand-cut egg noodles, and you have a plate that eats like a hug.

My advice is to arrive hungry and share nothing. Half the fun is watching a first-timer’s face when the plate lands and the schnitzel is visibly wider than the plate under it. Squeeze the lemon and listen for the crackle.

And if your eyes were bigger than your stomach, that is a happy problem. A reheated slab of this schnitzel makes the best next-day lunch you will eat all week, crisp edges and all.

Sausages, Sauerbraten, and the Wild Game Nobody Expects

Schnitzel is the headliner, but the supporting cast runs deep. The bratwurst and the rest of the house sausages are the real, snappy, coarse-ground article, and regulars will tell you every one on the menu earns its place.

Then there is the sauerbraten, a beef pot roast marinated for days until it turns silky, finished with a sweet and sour gravy that tastes like someone’s Oma guarded the recipe. The rouladen, thin beef rolled around pickle and onion, sits in the same comforting category.

For the true showpiece, order the Schweinshaxe, a roasted pork knuckle with crackling skin that is built for sharing and for photographs. Vegetarians are not left out, thanks to the Käsespätzle, Germany’s gloriously cheesy answer to macaroni.

Can’t choose? A mixed sausage plate lets you sample several at once, and it is the sort of order that starts a friendly debate over which one wins. My money is usually on the bratwurst, but I have been talked out of it more than once.

Here is a tip most first-timers miss: check the seasonal specials first. Depending on the calendar, the kitchen brings in tender white asparagus in spring, then venison, wild boar sausage, smoked duck breast, and rabbit leg as the year turns.

The bread is baked fresh in house, and you will smell it before you see it. Every entree comes with your pick of the German side canon: sauteed potatoes, warm herbed potato salad, spaetzle, a fluffy bread dumpling, or crisp potato pancakes with applesauce.

Save Room for Strudel

You will be full. Order dessert anyway. The homemade apple strudel comes out of the oven warm under a pour of vanilla sauce, the sort of finish that has you planning a return trip before you have cleared the plate.

If chocolate is more your language, the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, better known as Black Forest cake, layers chocolate, cherries, and cream into a slice of pure old-world patisserie. Get one of each and two forks. Nobody has to know.

Pair either one with a strong coffee and you have the perfect excuse to sit a while longer, listen to another song, and let the meal settle before you brave the drive home.

A Wall of Steins and Seventy Kinds of Beer

You cannot talk about this place without talking about the beer. The Bavarian Grill pours more than seventy authentic German labels, on draught and in the bottle, and serves each one in the correct style of glass.

That single detail tells you how seriously they take the ritual. A crisp Pilsner belongs in a tall, slim glass, a cloudy Hefeweizen in a curvy weizen glass, and a dark Dunkel in a heavy mug.

Come autumn, the Oktoberfest Märzen lagers roll in and the whole list gets a little maltier. If you cannot decide, the staff know the lineup cold and will happily steer you toward something that suits your dinner.

Look up and you will see hundreds of steins hanging overhead, and many of them belong to actual people.

The restaurant runs the Bayern Stein Club, which started in 1993 as a punch card for guests brave enough to work through all twenty-seven beers on the original list. The idea caught fire almost immediately.

Within its first dozen years the club had welcomed more than 1,200 members, and the most dedicated drinkers now chase second and third cards. Finish the list and your own personalized stein earns a permanent spot on the wall.

Did you know? A lidded stein was designed to keep your beer cold and your hand warm, which is exactly the wisdom you appreciate after your third Hefeweizen.

Long Tables, Live Polka, and Hand Bells

Walk in on any evening and the room is already having a good time. Live traditional German music plays nightly, all accordion and oompah, and entertainers like Alan Walling mix German songs with cheerful banter that pulls the whole room in.

The seating leans communal, with long tables that turn strangers into tablemates by the second round. There is a biergarten for the warm months, and the walls are papered with postcards from guests’ travels and Germany-themed puzzles.

The staff wear traditional Bavarian dress like it is the most natural thing in Plano. Celebrating something? The team gathers with a set of hand bells and plays “Happy Birthday” right at your table.

It is somehow both silly and genuinely moving, the kind of warmth you cannot fake. That is why families keep coming back for birthdays, anniversaries, and every Oktoberfest.

Speaking of which, Oktoberfest here is the main event of the year. The music gets louder, the seasonal lagers flow, and toasts break out across the long tables until the whole room feels like one very large, very cheerful family reunion.

Pro tip: bring a crowd. This food and this room were built for a big, loud, happy table, and a solo schnitzel run means missing half the joy of the place.

From Braunschweig to Plano: How It All Began

The story starts with Juergen Mahneke, born in Braunschweig, Germany, in 1958. He was the top hotel-administration student in the state of Hessen, a distinction that won him a trip to study at Cornell in 1983.

Along the way he met Elke, who became both his wife and his partner in the dream. In November of 1993, the two opened the Bavarian Grill together and poured their shared love of hospitality into it.

Their son Christian arrived in 1997 and grew up in the dining room. What began as a small, authentic beer hall slowly turned into a North Texas institution, and the accolades piled up fast.

Texas has deep German roots, from the Hill Country towns of Fredericksburg and New Braunfels to the sausage makers scattered across the state. The Bavarian Grill carries that heritage north to the Dallas suburbs and gives it a proper beer hall to call home.

ZAGAT named it the number one German restaurant in the entire nation every year from 2006 through 2013. It has since been crowned the best German restaurant in Texas again and again, including in 2020, 2021, and 2023. Twice it was called the best in all of America.

Juergen passed away in 2026 at the age of sixty-seven, and the community he built has kept his memory close. His wife Heather and son Christian have taken up the reins, still greeting guests the way he always did, so the recipes and the tradition carry on.

How to Get There

Where: Bavarian Grill, 3425 Premier Dr, Plano, TX 75023.

The kitchen runs Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. It is closed Sunday and Monday, so plan your schnitzel run accordingly.

The restaurant sits in a shopping center off Premier Drive in west Plano, about a half-hour north of downtown Dallas, an easy detour on any trip through the metroplex. Reservations are smart on weekends, and close to essential during Oktoberfest.

Start Planning Your Texas Trip to Bavaria

You do not need a passport to eat like you are in Munich. You just need a free evening, an empty stomach, a designated driver, and the willingness to let a stranger across the long table teach you a proper German toast.

So round up your favorite people, point the car toward Plano, and order the biggest schnitzel they will bring you. Raise a stein, sing along even if you do not know a single one of the words, and save a little room for that warm apple strudel. Prost, y’all.

Featured image: @ Bavarian Grill