Gustav’s Pub & Grill

The pretzels and the fondue! You gotta have it! I like coming here. The inside is big but it feels very homey and private when you are dining with your friends/​family. The service has been a little slow getting the food out the times I have been there but once the food does come out it is very very good.

Was in Portland last Wednesday on business and was here for lunch. I was looking forward to eating her again since I had enjoyed my previous visit, both food and service.
This time things have gone up a notch.
First off, Hal the waiter, was a hoot! a very funny and engaging, and a pleasure to have as a server. Everything was a pleasure for him to deal with, including a custom request for my salmon preparation. I was also double teamed by an equally hospitable young man (no name tag) who served the food and checked back. Service overall was excellent. Service timing and presence was just right, not too intrusive, not too absent. And this for lunch, which is when the A Team is not usually on duty.
The Salmon dish was done just perfectly, and the (pan-​fried?) spetzle was done with greens which was unique and very gourmet. Not your typical lard and pork meal, and worth of kudos.
Spaten Optimator beer on tap, yum. I had two.
I am back in Portland in two weeks and hope to enjoy another meal and brew then.

Great place! Food was delicious. The fondue was delicious and good choices for young kids (because every mother knows how picky Their kids can be). I gave 4 stars because we waited to get in for longer than we should have being that be had made reservations in advance. Our waiter was an older man, very friendly and easy to talk to. Had a get sence of humor as well. There is a nice bar with a wall full of choices. I would recommend this place and Rhinelander for dinner. (It’s the same place. Gustavs turns into the Rhinelander for dinner. Some people get confused)

Gustav’s, with its dark wood beams and cozy booths, was a great place to enjoy happy hour on such a cold and rainy late afternoon. Their happy hour menu includes many German specialties that you can’t usually get at most other places. I ordered potato pancakes and shepherd’s pie.. .but if I could have eaten more, I would have also gotten chicken schnitzel and a bratwurst. (And if I was really, really hungry, I would have gotten fondue too.. .because there are just so many good things to chose from.) My potato pancakes were done perfectly the way I like them, brown and crispy. The shepherd’s pie, a meat stew topped with a baked-​on crust of mashed potato and melted cheese, was hearty and delicious. Yes, it was all good, and the size of both dishes was substantial too. Food at Gustav’s is always good of course, and it’s especially satisfying at happy hour prices.

This place has a great happy hour. They have delicious and hearty (heavy) German food. Fondue is $ 6. I think the French onion soup is $ 5. They have schnitzel for $ 5. Pretty much everything on the happy hour menu is around $ 5. It is a very unique and Bavarian style interior. There is a small parking lot.

Great food big portions if you like to get full try the munich feast we drove 140 miles to eat here again and it was well worth the drive. We will be back again and again. I recommend these together restaurants for anyone who wants great german food and very reasonably priced

Don’t go here! This was part of a Portland icon for years (the rheinlander). It’s disappointing that one of portlands best restraurants has gone away. Service is consistently bad. If you order a salad and tell them to not bring the salad out at the same time dinner comes, don’t bother. We have been here several times and dinner comes on top of being served salad., crazy… even thought you tell them when you are ordering not to do that. We thought about not ordering dinner till we had eaten salad or appetizers, so we could eat at our own pace. Wow. Why go to a place that you have to play games with. And the food is no longer good. All the schnitzel dishes were dry.
When all of portlands restraurants are packed and you find gustavs not packed… Go with your gut! Stay away! Crazy… I’ve come to gustavs/​rheinlander for almost 50 years. See ya

This place is a lot of fun. It can get crazy busy so make a reservation. There are 2 different sides — gustav’s which is the bar and the rheinlander which is the restaurant where they sometimes have an accordion player and singer walking around entertaining. Both sides are good. For the most part, the service is great and the food is very yummy, if you like german food.

We come here fairly infrequently, but when we do it’s usually at the holidays for their festive meals and live accordion music. The staff are always on-​point and attentive. You can’t go wrong at this German restaurant! Excellent food, and the décor in the Rheinlander portion of the restaurant is amazing!

This has always been one of our favorites. How can you argue with delicious German beer and grub. That being said something changed a couple of years ago (was it sold?) and since then, it’s not the same. The service is generally slow and not very attentive and the food is good but it’s not great. We still love to go there on occasion but it doesn’t have the draw it once did.

Being vegetarian there’s already not too much on their list of offerings. We’ve visited twice with mixed results, both times on happy hour.
The good:
— the fondue
The bad:
— pretzels didn’t taste homemade or even German-​style
— potato pancakes were super bland
— beer selection is so-​so for a German establishment
— service seems to be hit or miss
I think I’ll stick with Stammtisch.

Service was good. The spätzle was greasy and flavorless. The kale salad was tasteless and oily. Yuck is all I can say

Wow. :-(I’ll admit that I have been spoiled a bit, having German Grandparents and eating some yummy german food in my childhood… I had high expectations for this place when my Daughter (a local) took us there (she had never been there, just thought it sounded interesting).
BUT this place really disappointed in many ways today. Three of us adults and two kids went about 1PM today, Saturday, and it took over an hour to get our adult meals. One hamburger was supposed to be plain and dry came smothered in spicy mustard that we painstakingly scraped and wiped off to make it edible to our GranDaughter. The manager eventually came and apologized after the long wait (they were catering to a large group that we were not aware of until too late to leave) but only offered more food, like desert. We were LONG past wanting to eat and leave, so why would we want to wait even more for desert? They never offered to take something $$s off of our already too expensive for lunch bill. Most of the other food left a lot to be desired too. I have never had a more tasteless boar bratwurst than this one. The warm German potato salad was pretty bland too. The best «meal» was sadly my Grandson’s grilled cheese sandwich and fries. The root beer was even so flat we had to order some lemonade. The waitress, however, was awesome, a real hustler and very attentive to our water and drink needs, but… not much she could do. Sorry this review is a bit disjointed, but I just wanted to get it done. We will not return here.

Came in for dinner with Mike and my parents after seeing the new Star Wars movie last night. We all thoroughly enjoyed our meals and our service and will certainly come back.

My mom and I came here and we had the chicken schnitzel and it was delicious!!! I ordered double mashed instead of getting the cabbage. We also ordered the fondue for an appetizer and it was sooo good. My mom isn’t a cheese lover and even she liked the fondue!!!

Shocking! I came in a month before Thanksgiving to set a reservation the anniversary table. My table had been given out to another party 10 minutes before my reservation time. They tried to seat me near a large party. This was not the private intimate reservation I made for my wife and I. We set in the bar for an hour to wait for our table. We waited another hour for our food. Our reservation was for 4:30 and at 7:00 we finally were served.
At the end of our meal the manager took care of our bill. While the food is always decent and this was a rare experience with the service.

I’m sitting here eating Popeyes for Thanksgiving dinner with my fiancé. We had originally planned on having dinner from Gustav’s through take-​out but, due to their inability to run a restaurant properly, I cancelled our order after realizing that the wait staff had no idea how much longer it would take to complete our small order — at that point, we had already waited over an hour after the wait staff told us it would take 15 minutes to complete our meal.
Thanks for ruining our Thanksgiving, Gustav’s. Maybe you should hold off on doing Thanksgiving next year and save people the trouble of dealing with you.

Fine selection of German and Northwest beers, and their sausage plates do justice to German cooking: tasty wurst and lots of potatoes and cabbage, and the whole grain mustard is an important touch. Good hearty food & lively atmosphere.

Eh it’s okay, the spaetzle was bland, the fondue was way too sharp, the wait was 30 minutes even though there were more empty tables than tables with people sitting. Chicken jaeger was good but nothing spectacular, guy got chicken spaetzle alfredo, his chicken was absolutely covered in pepper. I’m not afraid of seasoning but holy cats tone it down a notch. This place had a nice atmosphere, décor was great. All in all, not wowed by it, not supremely disappointed, just… whatever. It’s okay.

A staple of the Hollywood district for many years. You can sit in a bar area or the Bavarian Village and be serenaded!

We have a dearth of German restaurants in Hawaii; in fact I can’t think of a single one off the top of my head. So, having some German food while in Oregon was on my list. Unilocal steered my family and me here, and we were pleased. I had the sauerbraten with red cabbage, and it was better than my homemade recipe. I also had spaetzle and Radeberger beer. I was so inspired by the food and the dark wood German décor with stained glass windows, I couldn’t help myself and began singing a rousing «Du, du liegst mir im Herzen, du, du liegst mir im Sinn.» My family told me they were going to get up and leave if I didn’t stop singing! It was really good food and the service was decent, too. Will have to stop here the next time we come to Portland. The parking lot was full next to the restaurant, so we parked in the charming neighborhood.

Great service, nice menu with good German food.
Little things matter too! Plenty of soda refills and a good amount of the three mustards with the sausage sampler.
Sodq, snitzel, meatballs, sausage sampler, and awesome apple strudel = 57 bucks

I’ve been coming here for years. I don’t Unilocal every place I go to. but I thought I would mention something pretty damn cool that happened at this place tonight.
So, as I am looking at the drink menu. (I do know my way around this neighborhood pretty well) ha-​ha I do what I usually do, «check in» on Unilocal.
This time it was different… The waiter asked me if I needed a password to hook into their WiFi ! How cool is that!
Note; I didn’t even ask. Love that move!
The food is always consistent and they now serve IPA’s (not sure how I feel about that… need time to process it)…
Had this chocolate mousse and it was delish.
This wonderful Portland Landmark is still going strong. A place that when I eat here, I say to myself as I walk to the car «man, this place is really good why don’t I eat here more often…»

If you happen to go here on Father’s Day and it happens to be sunny, sit outside on that fabulous patio. Even though we did not have a reservation, which I recommend, we marched right in and were seated on the patio. Patio + sun + parents = nice time had by all.
Our server was really great at keeping us hydrated on that warm and sunny afternoon. We had beers of course but I was swilling water down like it was whiskey and I never had a dry moment.
Our starter of the fondue was to me, just OK. I’ve never been a super-​fan of fondue and I think the bread was a little stale and the bits too large for one bite. But dad liked it and that’s what counts.
My French Dip sandwich was really, really good. It was so tender and flavorful. My Caesar salad would have been much better with anchovies because that is how a classic Caesar salad is made. What’s up with the no anchovy thing anyway?
My parents, the old coots that they are, are rarely impressed by anything. They both really enjoyed their dishes, the Hungarian Veal Jäger. My mom had hers with chicken rather than the veal but both critics cleaned their plates, leaving no room for dessert.
I doubt I’ll be traveling over the river to hang out here often but for special occasions with the parents, it’s a solid win.
2015 — Review # 40

A few times I’ve been through here around 2pm on a weekday and I see couple old dudes sipping wine or cocktails at the bar. Feel is very cozy and their winter drink line up looked delicious.
One Sunday I thought I’d treat myself to a couple mid-​day beers. The reception was just fine. Their lobby was decorated for the Christmas holiday. Zero folks at the bar and maybe one table in the bar area was occupied. I sat at the bar and ordered a Dunkel from the bartender. The service was good.
But it lacked some charm. I considered a hot drink for later but didn’t see that cute menu that was on display the other day. They should consider having those festive drinks offerings made very obvious. All I saw was their standard cocktail menu. I did order the Happy Hour Pretzel. I loved the mustard the most, it was very hot.
They played a Football game on the TV and later some folks were anticipating a Blazer game.
A lot of older folks and families filled the dining room, then later the crowd got busier in the lounge.
A nice time overall, but would like to try their Winter Warmer drinks next visit.

I stopped by this place one night for their late night happy hour. My first impression is that this place was cute and friendly, but not very authentic. And I love me some authentic german cuisine.
In the parking lot and pub, they were playing soft rock instead of classic german tunes. It almost seemed like a buffalo wild wings turned german. Their menu was pretty extensive, but again, didn’t seem super authentic. The happy hour menu did have a pretty good amount of food, but I was disappointed that they didn’t really have any beer specials.
The food here surprised me — and it’s the reason I gave this place 4 stars. We tried the fondue (which I’ve never seen at a german place), and it was awesome. The shepherd’s pie and chicken schnitzel we’re also very good. And very filling when you’re drinking a stein of beer with your meal.
I’m still searching for a really authentic german restaurant, but in the meantime this is a great alternative.

I have to admit, I came in expecting very little. I’ve been here a few times before and the service was so slow. I was actually wonderfully surprised. They were very much on point with service. Our waiter was very attentive and appeared every time we had finished or if we wanted another beverage.
The food was substantial. We had the potato pancakes and pretzel. Their pretzel is pretty awesome, soft and chewy. Their food doesn’t knock me out but I’m not a German food fan so I can’t say it’s really great or really bad but to me. I tried their sauerbraten which is sort of a sweet and sour roast beef. I’ve tried their cabbage rolls but my facorite is the schnitzels. I’ve been to other German restaurants and it was at comparable. I left there happy and full. Kids got the things they wanted, grilled cheese and chicken strips.
All in all, I’m a fan.