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A downtown Mountain View beer garden is coming soon to Redwood City.
Dasbierhauz, a German beer garden which has been operating out of Olympus Caffe & Bakery since 2020, plans to open its second location in the former Cafe La Tartine space next month. The beer garden specializes in German beers, like hefeweizen, and traditional German food, including bratwurst, pretzels and schnitzel. Offering board games, Wi-Fi and children’s menus, you’ll often see large groups, families and people working on laptops.Â
“A beer garden is a community spot where everybody gets together and happily sits down for a few hours,” said Mehmet Vural, co-owner of Dasbierhauz.
Vural opened the original location with his brother and will open the second location with business partner Savas Basmuli, the owner of Cobani Gyro & Kebab in San Mateo. While Redwood City’s outdoor patio will be about half the size of Mountain View’s, its interior will be about double. The menus between the two locations will be relatively similar, but there will be some Redwood City-exclusive beers and menu items, including leberkäse, a specialty German meatloaf, and sauerbraten, a traditional German beef roast. The menu is conceptualized and developed by Vural.
“In Germany, they make the schnitzel so thin it dries, so mine has more meat to it,” he said. “I feel like when it comes to schnitzel, we are unbeatable because you get nice chunks of meat which are cooked perfectly, and the mushroom sauce is beautiful. And I have that special cream sauce which is my own recipe.”
Vural grew up in England but moved back and forth to Germany before settling in the Bay Area and opening Greek restaurant Ephesus, which closed in 2020, and Olympus Caffe & Bakery along Castro Street in Mountain View. During the pandemic, Vural decided to merge Olympus with his new concept of Dasbierhauz, co-running both businesses out of the same location.
“People love that idea, especially from the age of 30 to 45 who work in IT or engineering,” Vural said. “They like to get together but they don’t have any place to go because so many restaurants…don’t accept any group of people more than 10, 15, 20, and there is a cover charge for that.”
But at Dasbierhauz, parties of all sizes are welcome without any cover charges, and each individual can pay for his or her own food and drink separate from others in the same party. Vural said he eventually plans to phase out Olympus Caffe & Bakery and open even more locations of Dasbierhauz.
Vural, a San Mateo resident, said he chose to bring Dasbierhauz to Redwood City because “Redwood City is becoming the best city for an evening out.”
While Vural said Dasbierhauz is quite different from a bar and won’t stay open past midnight, he wanted to open his business in a lively city.
“The problem in the Bay Area is that people don’t stay out. People do go out, but people don’t stay out,” he said. “I grew up in south England. If you had this weather in England, people would never go home. Back in England, when the sun is out, everybody grabs a sandwich and drinks and sits down anywhere they can find grass. And the Bay Area has this potential better than anywhere in the world.”
Dasbierhauz, 830 Middlefield Road, Redwood City; Instagram: @dasbierhauz_redwoodcity.
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