What is a Hofbrau?

In most parts of the United States "hofbrau" means German cuisine, but on the West Coast the term has taken on a more specific meaning.

In Germany a hofbrau is a brewery with historical ties to a royal court. These breweries often had indoor facilities or outdoor beer gardens where food was served along with the regal brewskies. When the term crossed to America, hofbrau came to mean the particular kinds of food served along with the beer: usually roasts of beef, pork, and ham sliced up on the spot to make warm, hearty sandwiches, accompanied by steam-table side dishes. A few decades ago San Francisco and the greater Bay Area had many hofbraus where office workers could grab a hot sandwich and a cold brew for lunch. Besides Harry’s Hofbrau’s four Bay Area locations, two survivors of the genre are Lefty O'Doul's on Geary Street and Tommy's Joynt on Van Ness Avenue.

The local hofbrau concept seems to be a historical descendant of a vanished San Francisco innovation: the "free lunch." From the late 1800s until the 1920s, saloons here lured lunchtime drinkers by offering extravagant buffets of free vittles with the purchase of each 5¢ beer. Rudyard Kipling admiringly remarked in 1889 that "for something less than a rupee a day, a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be bankrupt."