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Food guide

How to find good German food

German restaurants in America tend to be either a genuine neighbourhood institution with eighty years behind it or a themed beer hall, and the two are easy to tell apart once you know that schnitzel is the tell.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Schnitzel pounded properly thin — It should overhang the plate and be no thicker than a coin. Thick schnitzel has not been pounded and will be dry at the edges before the middle cooks.
  • A dry, puffed crust — Good schnitzel breading separates slightly from the meat and blisters. Soggy breading means the oil was not hot enough.
  • House-made wurst, or a named butcher — Weisswurst, bratwurst, currywurst, bockwurst — variety and provenance both matter.
  • Spätzle made there — Irregular, chewy, scraped fresh. Packet spätzle is uniform and soft.
  • A serious beer list with proper glassware — German beer culture is specific about styles and glasses, and a restaurant that respects it usually respects the food.

What to order

  • Jägerschnitzel or wiener schnitzel — The first with mushroom gravy, the second plain with lemon. Veal if they have it.
  • Sauerbraten — Beef marinated for days in vinegar and spices, with red cabbage and dumplings.
  • Currywurst — Sliced bratwurst with curried ketchup. Berlin street food, and better than the description.
  • Käsespätzle — Spätzle baked with cheese and fried onion. The German answer to mac and cheese.
  • Pretzel with obatzda — Soft pretzel with a spiced cheese spread.

Where to find German food

Open listings put 634 German restaurants across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.

Cities with the most

New York, NY 16 Chicago, IL 10 Los Angeles, CA 9 Seattle, WA 7 Milwaukee, WI 7 Washington, DC 6 Sarasota, FL 6 San Francisco, CA 6 Portland, OR 6 New Braunfels, TX 6 El Paso, TX 6 Columbus, OH 6

Campuses with the most within a mile

The New School 5 NYU 5 MATC 5 Marquette University 4 NYCCT 4 Touro University 3 Jefferson 3 Seattle Central 3 Franklin University 3 FIT 3

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

German searches read for schnitzel preparation and house-made sausage language, and weight long-running family ownership heavily — this is a cuisine where the hundred-year-old neighbourhood place is nearly always better than the newer themed one, and reviews say so plainly.

Find German food near you →

Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

When you might want this

What to eat on a cold rainy night Where to eat with a big group Where to take friends visiting from out of town