Beer Gardens: We’ve got a beef.

This is a beer garden.

The weather is finally starting to warm up, and that gives us all the itch to drink outside. So there’s going to be a lot of talk about beer gardens in New York City in the next few weeks. But far too often, the term “Beer Garden” tends to be thrown around in New York. And it has to stop.

Just because a bar has a German theme and serves German beer doesn’t make it a beer garden. By definition, a beer garden (taken from the German “biergarten”) is an open-air space where beer and food are served. The concept actually originated as Bavarian breweries planted gardens above cellars to keep their lagers cool enough to ferment underground. More entrepreneurial breweries turned these spaces into outdoor spaces with communal seating that serve beer and traditional food.

Again, we’re talking about outdoor spaces here.

We’re baffled by how Bierhaus (712 3rd Ave., at 45th St., Midtown East) - a perfectly good German beer bar in Midtown - meets the standards of a “beer garden” in this piece on Gothamist. It’s entirely enclosed. The press often refers to Radegast Hall (113 N. 3rd St., at Berry St., Williamsburg) and Bier International (2099 Frederick Douglass Blvd., at 113th St., Harlem) as “beer gardens,” but they’re also surrounded by four walls (although one has a small space with a retractable roof). These are not beer gardens. These are beer halls. 

What’s a beer hall? Well, look no further than the oldest American beer garden: Queens’ Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden (29-19 24th Ave., at 29th St., Astoria). The indoor space, which serves beer and food in large enclosed spaces with communal seating, is called Bohemian Hall. The outdoor space, which serves beer and food in large open-air spaces with communal seating, is called the Beer Garden.

This is not a difficult concept to grasp, but the local media seems to assume that anything German-themed that sells beer is a beer garden. And in an effort to market themselves, some of these spaces have called themselves “indoor beer gardens.” There’s no such thing as an “indoor beer garden.” It’s a beer hall, okay? 

Unless your purpose is to intentionally mislead people into thinking you have an outdoor space, there’s no reason you shouldn’t call yourself a beer hall. Embrace it.