TASTE: Berliner Weisse mit Schuss at Heidelberg Restaurant

There comes a stretch of days in the peak of summer when you want to step off the sidewalks’ pulsing heat waves into not just an air-conditioned space but another dimension. Heidelberg, the circa-1936 German restaurant in Yorkville, on a stretch of Eighty-Sixth Street formerly known as Sauerkraut Boulevard, has been providing such a refuge for nearly a century. Even the white Tudor exterior beckons with its cool solidity, like a country farmhouse. Furthermore, the bar inside is perhaps the only place in the five boroughs where one can find the historic German summer drink known as the Berliner Weisse mit Schuss.

The drink is, traditionally, a low-ABV sour wheat ale, the Berliner Weisse, combined with a shot (“Schuss”) of either pink raspberry syrup (himbeersaft) or green woodruff syrup (waldmeister). It is available in can form from various local craft brewers, among them Evil Twin. But the best way to drink it is from a tall grass at the ancient wooden bar of Heidelberg, where the bartender, in a plaid dirndl, alternately watches the US Olympic gymnastics team on a flat-screen and pours shots of Jägermeister for an increasingly rowdy crew of three Germans. Iron candelabras flicker over the woodwork. German flags flutter in the breeze from the A/C. 

The dining area is empty but is festooned with taxidermy, antlers, shields, and dramatic oil paintings of craggy, windswept scenes. We have entered another dimension: the Upper East Side’s sports-bra-clad women; Popsicle-stained toddlers; small, serious-faced dogs; and hospital staff with flapping ID tags are in the distant future, and we are in the past, a past where a tall glass of sour-sweet ale is the perfect antidote to a sweltering afternoon.

The bartender informs me that, at least today, the Berliner Weisse would be made with regular, not sour, wheat beer, and so would be a bit sweeter than is typical; historically, the area in northern Germany where the drink originated brewed an unsually funky ale by adding a bacteria known as Lactobacillus, skirting certain beer purity laws. The green or red sweet syrup was meant to mitigate the unusually funky flavor.

The bartender fills a tall glass with the Weisse and pours the syrup on top, creating a pink dot atop the creamy head, like a secret code.

I can’t resist taking a sip through the foam, which tingles on my lips: the flavor is tangy and effervescent at first, but a a few moments in the fruit appears, like a sweet tickle on my tongue. It’s almost an afterthought: first sour, then sweet.

I see that the syrup has gathered at the bottom of the glass and the wheat beer has settled atop it, casting a red hue onto the paper coaster.

I ask the bartender to show me the bottle of syrup, which is made by a brand called Marco Polo and is all natural.

As the froth subsides, it leaves a crenellated lacy scalloping on the glass, not the hazy perforations of most beer foam.

Next to me, a guy with sunglasses pushed back in his hair and saws away at the plate of Weiner schnitzel that’s just arrived, while catching glimpses of the Olympics through the forest of beer taps. I assume he’s a local frat bro grabbing a quick local lunch, when a willowy woman drifts through the door, slips into the seat beside him, and, without exchanging any words, he feeds her a bite of schnitzel off his fork. Then they kiss, and I notice both are wearing wedding rings. One of the best things about New York, I reflect, is how one makes assumptions about people that are swifly proved wrong. Down the bar, the bartender is pouring another round of shots of Jägermeister into tiny fluted glasses for the Germans. This time she pours one for herself, flings it back into her mouth, and it dribbles down the front lacing of her dirndl. She mops at her chest with a bar towel, laughing. “Drunk already,” she jokes, though obviously she is on top of her game. “Well, got to enjoy the summer!”