A Dozen Dives: The Hoffbrau
12 places we’re drawn to in spite of ourselves. And sometimes in spite of themselves.
Day 9: The Hoffbrau
Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. Friday. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday-Monday.
By Mike Sutter | Fed Man Walking | 04.17.12
When the Hoffbrau turned 75 in 2009, I interviewed owners Ruben Ray and Mary Gail Hamby Ray. He was worried about the economy, about selling 150 steaks a day when he used to do 350 or even 400. "You've got to keep up with the dynamics of the economy or you die. And we don't plan on doing that," he said at the time. And now almost three years later, T-bones and strips still sizzle on the flat-top in back. Their son Zach works the front counter, and there’s still a picture of their daughter from when she was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
One big change: There are menus on the table, whereas the waitresses used to recite it from memory, all five or six main courses, all of them variations on steaks cut thin and wide, except for the chicken, which Ruben Ray will tell you is what he eats when nobody’s looking. This is the kind of place men take their buddies when they come back from the service, and I’ll tell you that it’s a place I take my kids so they can see what a country steak place is like in the heart of a gentrified entertainment district.
What you’re eating: The 17-ounce T-bone with fries and salad for $18.95, $17.95 at lunch. I like my strips, sirloins and ribeyes on the thick side, but the Hoffbrau plays them thin, a better cut both for speed and the flat-top grill. That works just fine for the T-bone, though, especially the loin side and its tender mercies. This is not a trimmed-for-show steak from a cabernet-and-leather showplace. If it were, this cut would run better than twice as much. Instead, it’s jacketed in a bulletproof cowl neck of fat three-quarters of inch thick in places. And the short cook time at modest heat means the fat melts only at the rim. The rest is almost as God made it, an inntertube of protection against cold, injury and the hungrier times, a lesson in plate-top butchery skills armed only with a civilian’s serrated knife.
The steak’s rough-country look is matched by its high-gloss overindulgence. The secret behind the quarter-inch of shimmering amber that pools on the plate like an oil spill is simple: margarine and lemon, and it’s a close match to what your sense memory says is the taste of steak. They go together like host and humours, parts of the same living experience.
The Hoffbrau experience is finished with a salad of iceberg lettuce and green olives with garlic dressing so strong you’ll wear it home like stripper’s glitter. It’s maddeningly simple and addictive like the salad at the Olive Garden, that big bowl of escape from the chagrin at being trapped without irony at your in-laws’ table there. Playing the role of your breadsticks tonight will be potatoes cut into long quarters, fried to a turtle shell outside and a heart of soft, starchy velour inside. For steak as free from guile as the Hoffbrau’s, these unassuming sides make the best sense.
What you’re drinking: A little screwtop bottle of Woodbridge cabernet? No? Well, it’s there if you change your mind. I’m having a green bottle of lager from that one-f Hofbrau in Germany ($4), but there’s Shiner Bock and domestic lights in longnecks, too.
Other options: I’ve already spoiled the surprise about the chicken ($7.95 lunch/$8.95 dinner). You can also get onion rings, jalapeño poppers and fried zucchini. But here’s the beef: 6-ounce New York strip ($8.95/$9.95), 10-ounce sirloin ($12.95), 14-ounce sirloin ($14.95/$15.95) and 10-ounce ribeye ($15.95/$16.95).
(Photos by Mike Sutter © Fed Man Walking)
A DOZEN DIVES