Wauwatosa Business Spotlight: Bavaria, relatively new, harkens to the old world

Café Bavaria can't help but embrace the farm-to-table movement.

"We do not actually own a large freezer," admitted Drew Cyr, general manager at Bavaria, the newest limb on the Lowlands Group family tree, which includes Café Centraal, Café Benelux and fellow Wauwatosa watering hole Café Hollander, known collectively as The Grand Cafes.

"It's a small building. It's built over the top of the river. There's no basement. Our kitchen is located on half of the second level, and there physically wasn't room for a walk-in freezer. We have two small freezers to store french fries and kettle chips, and that's pretty much about it. Otherwise, everything is brought in fresh two or three times a week.

"It does take a little extra effort, a few more checks and balances in the kitchen, maintaining that prep kitchen. And it does cost a little bit more, but that was one of the goals we had when we opened: to serve real food."

It's also a new challenge for Cyr, who ran the bar at Café Hollander on Downer Avenue and a spent a year running the bar at Café Centraal before taking the lead as manager at Café Bavaria, which opened in February 2014.

"It was something, whether I knew it or not, that I was working towards," said Cyr, a former photographer, who worked in a country kitchen and checked IDs before stepping behind the bar, serving the thirsty masses at Oktoberfest in Glendale before, ultimately, taking the lead at Café Bavaria.

It's a pretty appropriate pedigree for a man now responsible for bringing schnitzel and schweinshaxe (a slow roasted, deep fried pork shank that falls off the bone tender in the middle and crispy on the outside) to the mainstream, while also interesting traditional German connoisseurs.

"It's hard to please old German women. They all feel their recipes are the best," Cyr teased. "But, slowly but surely, we are winning them over."

And, if their take on traditional food and upscale pub fare doesn't do it, Cyr hopes fussball and beer might do the trick.

Café Bavaria will launch the Kaiser Club this month, promising a free beer, a free stein and discount refills to the first 50 soccer fans who sign up with the start of the Bundesliga's season. (That's German soccer league.)

And, soon, the café will offer live polka music and kölsch service, renewing the German pub tradition of serving top-fermented beer, or kölsch, fresh from the cask in seemingly bottomless but tiny glasses.

"You have to serve kölsch quickly because it's not pasteurized and you can't serve it in steins because it would get warm and flat. So, servers bring it out in small glasses on large trays. And they basically never stop serving you, tallying your bill by hash marking your coaster, until you take your coaster and cover your glass," Cyr said. "We're doing that every Thursday night."

It's a tradition Franz Beckenbauer, famed soccer World Cup winner, namesake of Bavaria's secret menu Braunschweiger sandwich and the café's unofficial patriarch — there's a giant painting of Beckenbauer in the bar — would, no doubt, endorse.

JUST THE FACTS

BUSINESS:Café Bavaria, 7700 W. Harwood Ave.

WEB: www.cafebavaria.com

PHONE: (414) 271-7700

OWNER:The Lowlands Group

INCORPORATED: 2014

TYPE OF BUSINESS:restaurant

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