The Standard Biergarten — Restaurant in New York

So apparently my yelp friends do not like this place. I'll be offering a contrasting opinion today because I had an enjoyable experience here last night. That experience was definitely helped by the fact that some random guy gave my friend and I 3 free beer tickets he couldn't use in his way out. Another bonus was the band that was playing in front of the entrance was quite entertaining.Before I even entered the place I was happy to discover that there was a beer garden in this part of Manhattan. I frequent this area and lacked a good place to grab drinks with friends. Beergarten definitely fills that void.

First thing I noticed upon entering was the line to buy beer tickets. I found this to be redundant and annoying. As the night went on I realized this was actually a logical way of handling things. The line for the tickets was only about 3 mins and once you get to the bar you just order and hand the bartender the ticket. This prevents the bar staff from having to count money, swipe cards and other transactional things. This is why I was able to get beer here faster than other beer gardens. I tried a few beers but my favorite was the dark lager (black something) I forgot the name but it was tasty.

4 stars because biergarten provided exactly what I was looked for, a place to drink beer and catch up with a friend in the meat packing dist. I didn't try any food so I can't comment on that but I think the place is ran efficiently. As far as all the "douche bags" people are complaining about I didn't experience any of that. Maybe because I came to interact with my friend and wasn't really mingling with the crowd. I must say the people that I did interact with were friendly and as mentioned before one of them even gave us free beer.

Bonus: Los Tacos No. 1 is around the corner. You might want to skip the sausage and pretzels and go grab some delicious tacos and cons right back and was it down with beer....

As the wise founding father Benjamin Franklin once said "Beer is proof god loves us and wants us to be happy". With such wise counsel, a biergarden should be the best way to have some of that love rub off via a few drinks. Unfortunately, the Standard Biergarden doesn't pass the grade for what a biergarden should be and feels like a bit of a ripoff particularly compared to other biergardens and bars throughout the city.

Although rather spacious, upon arriving at 9:30 the entire place was packed leaving our group struggling to find a table for us to sit at. Once we managed to get a spot, we went to go buy beers - or rather tickets to go buy beers. The Biergarden, somewhat confusingly uses a ticket system for their beers but not for their mixed drinks and cocktails. Each ticket is $9 and one ticket gets you a medium stein of beer, with 2 tickets getting you a large stein of beer. Disappointingly, there were only 4 beer selections on tap, as opposed to other biergardens, which have a much greater diversity of suds. The separate bar for cocktails and mixed drinks was overpriced and crowded with a basic gin and tonic costing $13 and taking too long for a bartender to ask for the drink order

Bit of a fratty vibe mixed with the upscale guests of the attached hotel made it very hard to try to figure out what the Standard Biergarden was trying to be (and even harder to dress for). Overall I don't think I'll be coming back to the...

More fun than good.

My wife loves German food and loves biergartens. This is like the Disney of biergartens.

Look, the standard is a great restaurant and this is clearly the fun section of a restaurant that takes itself quite seriously. There are ping pong tables. People dressed in the German women's soccer team.

There's a weird system of buying tickets to get beer and food but you can also got to the bar to buy stuff without tickets.

The food is not great but I don't think that's such a big deal. This is clearly about people who like beer and the friends they drag along. And the occasional person wanting to wear lederhosen.

I had chicken wurst, which was not the worst but leaning in that direction. I also had the curry wurst, which seemed like the chicken wurst with curry sauce. And mustard. You know, if you're serving sausage with copious curry sauce and grain mustard on the side, you're probably not a gastropub. Just saying.

Okay, there should be a whole section about the restrooms here. They are odd. The men's and women's restrooms are poorly marked sides divided by a large common area. The central area has sinks with missing knobs and my wife complained about no locks on the...