The Chester Biergarten – An Outdoor Biergarten on Your Summer Bucketlist

After a winter of seemingly endless polar vortexes, it’s officially summertime in the city. Although you may (begrudgingly) spend many hours indoors at your desk, as soon as the weekend hits, the only thing you want is to be outside, away from the sub-zero temperatures of your office. At this point, your Google search box knows what you want, and it conveniently auto-populates some variation of “where can I eat/drink/do anything outdoors in NYC?” as soon as you start typing. Thanks to the recent expansion of Paige Hospitality Group’s The Chester Meatpacking, there is no need to continue searching. At The Chester Biergarten, you can find all that you’ve been looking for: good food, good drinks, and good company—all outdoors, all the time.

While the words “causal” and “sports bar” may not seem to pair with the word “Meatpacking,” don’t let the juxtaposition throw you off guard. Unlike most venues in Meatpacking, The Chester Biergarten offers a comfortable, relaxed environment, reminiscent of any authentic German beer hall. And, unlike most places in Meatpacking, the staff at The Chester will welcome you, even if your group’s guy-to-girl ratio is less than ideal. As long as you come hungry, thirsty, and with a good “give me some sunlight” attitude, there will be a long Oktoberfest-style table waiting for you.

At The Chester Biergarten, the menus are straightforward and simple. The food menu is DIY style where you can fill in how many of each item you want, or one of everything. The drink menu features four beers on tap—Pilsner, Hefeweizen, Schwarzbier, and Helles Lager, which are available in two sizes: half liter and full liter. The Biergarten even offers a limited number of Das Boot glasses, though normally the liter-sized drafts will do the trick. Beyond those on tap, the menu also offers a variety of bottled beers and Reál White or Red sangria to really get you into the summer spirit. If you are looking for a little more “spirit,” the back of the menu features a list of handcrafted cocktails. For starters, try the West Side cocktail, which resembles an Old Fashioned but is garnished with blackberries instead of the traditional orange peel. For a spicier option, try the Hellfire, with jalapeño-infused avion, lemon juice, agave, and topped with a whole cayenne pepper. But, trust us on this one: you should not eat the pepper.

But, things you should eat are as follows: the housemade pretzels with three dipping sauces–mustard aioli, sriracha aoili, and cheddar-bacon-jalapeño sauce; the fried pickles with chipotle aioli; and the bratwurst with sauerkraut, mustard peppers, and fries, all on a handmade bun. Each of these dishes came out extraordinarily fresh, unlike most overly fried bar food. Each item also paired perfectly with both the liter (yup, the big one) Hefeweizen beer and the Hellfire cocktail, and the dipping sauces were good enough to be eaten on their own—if you do eat them solo, we won’t judge you. Besides these dishes, the Biergarten’s signature items are the bucket of fried chicken and the bucket of fried shrimp. In fact, everything comes in a bucket, so there’s a good chance that the food will disappear quickly once its set down on your table. If it happens to be you who finishes the bucket, we won’t judge you either.

Even if the weather is “unpredictable” (as in, sunny one minute and pouring the next), The Chester Biergarten has you covered no matter what Mother Nature throws your way. Our visit occurred on a particularly sunny Sunday afternoon, which quickly turned into a torrential downpour. But the elements didn’t seem to phase Manager Matt Lovely or his staff, and thanks to some quick thinking, as well as the Biergarten’s extendable awning, everyone stayed dry and happy. Those who made the poor choice of not spending their Sunday at the Biergarten were neither dry nor happy. All in a day’s work for The Chester team.  

According to Manager Lovely, The Chester Biergarten will be open “until it’s freezing,” meaning you can hold off on scouring the Internet for outdoor restaurant and bar ideas for a while. And although we may not be in the height of sports season right now, you can still catch whichever big game is playing that day on one of the nine mounted flat screen TVs throughout the bar. Once the fall sports begin, The Chester will broadcast all the local games, so you won’t have to worry about missing your favorite team, starting with pre-season. In the meantime, you can sit back, relax to the upbeat soundtrack (played at a manageable volume, unlike many of the other venues in the neighborhood), and make the most of your time away from the office.

No more need to flee Manhattan on the weekends. Thanks to The Chester Biergarten, you can now start enjoying the summer right here in the city, the right way—outdoors, surrounded by great food, great company, and of course, a great liter of beer.

The Chester Biergarten,
now open at The Chester Meatpacking
18 Ninth Ave, New York, NY 10014
(646) 253-2284