These Historic Texas German Restaurants Serve Schnitzel and Sausage Like the Old Country

The first time my grandmother handed me a fork of schnitzel, I was six, standing on tiptoe at a long wooden table while an accordion wheezed somewhere behind me. The cutlet was thin as a napkin, fried gold, and dusted with a squeeze of lemon.

I remember thinking food was not supposed to crackle like that. It did. I have been chasing that sound across Texas ever since.

Here is the happy secret about the Lone Star State: you do not need a passport to find it. The Hill Country and the big cities are stitched through with old-world biergartens, families who still grind their own sausage, and dining rooms where the polka never quite stopped.

German settlers poured into central Texas in the 1830s and 1840s, and they never really left the kitchen. Their great-grandchildren are still frying schnitzel today.

Below, discover nine beloved Texas German restaurants where the schnitzel crackles, the sausage snaps, and the strudel tastes like somebody’s oma made it that morning. Some are a century old and some are brand new. Grab a stretchy waistband and let us go.

1. Scholz Garten in Austin

Start where all of it started. August Scholz, a German immigrant, opened this saloon and beer garden in 1866, just after the Civil War, and it has poured a beer every year since.

That makes it the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Texas and, by most counts, the longest-running biergarten in America.

I like to sit under the live oaks with a giant Bavarian pretzel, the kind that arrives blistered and warm with a pot of beer cheese and a smear of spicy mustard. Order the jägerschnitzel or build your own brat board with house-made sausage and a pile of spaetzle.

Toast the fact that the Austin Saengerrunde, a German singing society, bought the place in 1908 and still owns it today. The wooden tables, the shade, the clink of steins: it has felt like this for well over a century.

Did you know? Generations of Texas politicians have cut deals at these tables, from governors to the barroom regulars who outlast them. The beer is better than the politics.

Pro tip: come on a game day and the whole garden turns into one roaring, burnt-orange party under the oaks.

Where: 1607 San Jacinto Blvd, Austin, TX 78701

2. Krause’s Cafe and Biergarten in New Braunfels

Gene Krause opened his place in 1938, and for decades locals filled it, until the doors closed in the late 1990s and the town lost a piece of itself. Then a developer bought the shuttered building, spent years rebuilding it, and reopened it with a sprawling biergarten in 2014.

The bratwurst platter is the move here: two links from the New Braunfels Smokehouse next door, sauerkraut, red cabbage, and cottage-fried potatoes that soak up everything. If you are hungrier, the jägerschnitzel comes buried under a mushroom gravy that I would happily drink.

The other headline is the beer wall. More than a hundred brews rotate through, so you can chase your sausage with something Bavarian or something brewed twenty minutes away. On weekend nights a band sets up in the biergarten and the whole yard sings along.

Save room for a wedge of German chocolate cake. I never do, and I always regret it on the drive home.

Where: 148 S Castell Ave, New Braunfels, TX 78130

3. Alpine Haus in New Braunfels

A few blocks over, Alpine Haus tucks fine German dining into a preserved building that has watched downtown New Braunfels for more than 160 years. The kitchen leans Bavarian but borrows freely from Austria and Switzerland, which is a long way of saying the schnitzel selection is enormous.

I always start with the sauerbraten, that pot roast marinated for days until it turns sweet, sour, and fall-apart tender. Rinder rouladen, thin beef rolled around pickle and bacon, is the other one to fight over. Whatever you land on, the sides of spaetzle and red cabbage are non-negotiable.

The stone walls and low light make it feel like a mountain inn, and in a town this Bavarian, that is exactly the point.

Pro tip: ask about the beer and wine pairings. The family here keeps notes on which German brew flatters which plate, and they are usually right.

Where: 251 S Seguin Ave, New Braunfels, TX 78130

4. Der Lindenbaum in Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg is the German capital of Texas, and Der Lindenbaum sits right on Main Street inside a limestone building German pioneers raised generations ago. Chef Ingrid Hohmann named it for the ancient linden tree that shaded her family home back in the Eifel mountains of Germany.

Ingrid trained at one of Europe’s most respected hotel and restaurant schools, apprenticing at Maria Laach, and it shows. She opened as a little bakery serving apfelstrudel and Black Forest cake.

Demand for her Rhineland lunches gradually turned it into one of the finest German kitchens in the state. Come for the schnitzel, thin and golden, and do not skip her strudel.

The dining room is small and warm, the kind of place where a stranger tells you what to order and turns out to be right.

Where: 312 E Main St, Fredericksburg, TX 78624

5. Otto’s German Bistro in Fredericksburg

If Der Lindenbaum is the classic, Otto’s is the reinvention. John and Evelyn Washburne opened it in 2013 to prove German food could be more than heavy and brown, and their farm-to-table cooking changed a few minds in the Hill Country.

The signature is a crispy duck schnitzel, laid over spaetzle and red cabbage with a forest-berry demi-glace that sounds fussy and eats like a hug. Start with the warm pretzel and beer cheese.

Then let the house wurst platte, paired with a tangy vinegar potato salad and grainy mustard, remind you why sausage is an art form. They cure and grind it in house, and you can taste the difference in the snap.

The menu changes with the seasons and wanders into Alsace and northern Italy, so no two visits taste quite alike. The dining room is small and convivial, the sort of place where the farmer who grew your dinner might be at the next stool. I love that about it.

Where: 316 E Austin St, Fredericksburg, TX 78624

6. Old German Bakery and Restaurant in Fredericksburg

Some mornings I do not want a full schnitzel. I want the smell of an actual German bakery, and this one has been filling Main Street with it since 1975.

Master baker Lutz Henschel took the ovens over in 1998, bringing twenty years of Old World training with him from Germany.

Breakfast runs all day, which is the correct way to run a bakery. Order the crepe-thin German pancakes or a plate of potato pancakes, and no matter what, walk out with an apple strudel and a fat cinnamon roll for the road. The pretzels are real too, chewy and salted.

The decor is Old World Berlin, the atmosphere is family, and the recipes are all made from scratch. It feels like breakfast at someone’s grandmother’s, which is the point.

Where: 225 W Main St, Fredericksburg, TX 78624

7. Walburg German Restaurant and Biergarten in Walburg

Tiny Walburg sits about thirty miles northeast of Austin, and its whole downtown is basically one gorgeous old mercantile. Mr. Hy Doering, born in Walburg, Germany, built that building in 1882 and named the whole town after his birthplace. The restaurant moved in a century later, in 1987.

Owner Ronald Tippelt hails from Munich, and it shows in the sausage and schnitzel, though the kitchen happily plates a chicken-fried steak for the Texans at the table.

The real draw is the biergarten out back, where live music and long picnic tables make every Friday feel like Oktoberfest. String lights, cold beer, an accordion, and half of Williamson County singing along.

The building itself is worth the drive: pressed-tin ceilings, worn wood floors, and a bar that has poured since the mercantile days. Come Sunday for the all-you-can-eat buffet if you plan to earn a nap afterward. I always do.

Where: 3777 FM 972, Walburg, TX 78673

8. Bavarian Grill in Plano

Proof that you do not have to leave the suburbs to leave the country. Bavarian Grill has been Plano’s place to say prost since 1993, and it commits hard to the bit.

The waitstaff wear dirndls and lederhosen, a live band plays polka, and a model train chugs along a track near the ceiling all evening.

The schnitzel arrives smothered in mushroom gravy over buttery spaetzle, and it is exactly the plate you hoped for. Beyond that, the menu runs deep with bratwurst, rouladen, and sauerbraten, backed by one of the largest German beer lists in Texas, more than seventy labels at last count.

Save room for a slice of Black Forest cake, all cherries and cream and dark chocolate. Then bring a group, order a boot of beer, and let the accordion do the rest. Nobody leaves this room in a bad mood.

Where: 3425 Premier Dr, Plano, TX 75023

9. Kuby’s Sausage House in Dallas

In Dallas, the Kuby name has meant sausage since 1961, when Karl Kuby set up shop in Snider Plaza. The family traces its butchering back to 1728 in Kaiserslautern, Germany, which is roughly three hundred years of practice at making a link snap.

Part deli, part market, part restaurant, Kuby’s makes around eighty kinds of sausage in house. Order the wurst teller, a sampler plate anchored by house-made links with homemade sauerkraut, German potato salad, and red cabbage.

Then walk the meat counter afterward and buy a cooler’s worth to smuggle home. The glass cases run the length of the room, packed with bratwurst, knackwurst, and things you cannot pronounce yet.

The place still processes hunters’ deer and elk into sausage every season, a small detail that tells you these folks are serious. Karl Kuby Sr. became a Dallas legend behind that counter, and the family has kept the aprons on ever since. Grab a stein and settle in.

Where: 6601 Snider Plaza, Dallas, TX 75205

Start Planning Your Texas Trip Across the Atlantic

You do not have to pick just one. Half the joy is the drive between them, that stretch of Hill Country where the town names turn to Fredericksburg and Gruene and Walburg and the radio still finds a polka station if you are patient.

Any one of these nine will scratch the itch, but the real trip is a weekend of them strung together, one bratwurst and biergarten at a time.

So pack a loose pair of pants, cue up an accordion playlist, and go find the schnitzel that crackles. Somewhere out there, an oma is pulling strudel from the oven, and she saved you a seat. Prost, and safe travels.

Featured image: Richard C via Krause’s Cafe