Fabian Grund
fgrund@uwyo.edu
Shöcktoberfest is the newest place to be in Downtown Laramie. So far Shöcktoberfest is just having a soft opening, but the new German restaurant/bar is celebrating its grand opening this week from Thursday until Saturday.
Jason and Tina Palumbo, owners of Shöcktoberfest, said they want their restaurant to be seen as a place where everything can happen, whether it is hosting a yoga party or having punk bands perform.
The German-American couple owns a restaurant license, which means they make their profits from 60 percent food sales and 40 percent drink sales. The advantage of this license is that they are an 18 and up venue, which is pretty good news for all the freshmen on campus.
Shöcktoberfest offers a variety of German food, which is kept simple and traditional. As expected they serve some sausages, Sauerkraut and pretzels, but what surprised me was the fact that they even serve “Spätzle,” which are German egg noodles. After trying a sample plate I was really impressed with the authenticity of their food.
Obviously you can’t get all the traditional ingredients thousands of miles away from Germany, but in my opinion this is as good as it gets with American ingredients. A German restaurant located in Aurora, Colorado supplies Shöcktoberfest with the ingredients, and they serve it deli-style , since the setup in the venue is more like a bar.
Since it’s a German place, I was hoping that they offer German beer, but for now they just offer beer that is brewed in the U.S. since the couple is still waiting to get their import/export license.
The Palumbo’s plan is to import beer from Bavarian microbreweries. Bavaria, former home of Tina Palumbo, is a state in Southern Germany and known as the state with the highest beer consumption and appreciation for beer.
German beer is legally required to be brewed after the so-called “Purity Law.” This law only permits using water, hop and malt as ingredients of the brewing process. Therefore you can say German beer is like Heisenberg’s Crystal Meth under beers. As soon as they have German beer, you know where you will find me after 4 p.m.
Jason and Tina said they also hope to host a lot of private parties and that they would also like to collaborate with UW to host events like international student parties, where different international students could present their countries and its culture. So far this is just an idea but they have faith that their venue has potential for a lot of events.
Part of their local business is the outside beer garden area and the Shöcktoberfest crew still has more creative ideas for how to improve their restaurant, including a small-sized Christmas market, selling Turkish-German kebab and a lot more. There is even a German TV show called “Goodbye Deutschland” that will report on Jason and Tina’s life and new restaurant in Laramie.
So if you crave delicious German food, Shöcktoberfest is the place to go to.
