Rasselbock is participating in Long Beach Food Scene Week 2024, a ten-day celebration of our city’s food culture with over 60 restaurants involved. To check out their menu, click here. For more information on LBFSW, click here.
Rasselbock has long been the steward of traditional German cuisine, having been home in Bixby Knolls since 2016.
And its owner, Germany native and Logn Beach resident Björn Risse, is looking forward to nearing the decade mark with his array of schnitzel, bratwurst, goulash, käsekrainer, strudels, and plenty of house-made mustard to go around.
How did Rasselbock come to be in Bixby Knolls?
When Rasselbock first opened, it had been just a year since Björn moved to Long Beach. His concept took over a much-loved gastropub, The Factory, with Björn coming in on the five-year anniversary of Wirtshaus in West Hollywood. And though, in a sense, the two shared a similarity—beer and food that goes with beer—for many, there couldn’t have been a more starker contrast. Björn was coming beautifully German. And we mean German.
“When we first opened, people here had no idea what German food was—on any level,” Björn said. “German restaurant—what does that even mean? I remember when we put the name, all we got asked was, ‘What—all you have is sausage and beers?’ And yes, we have those—but so much more.”
“It was a definitive educational moment—something we also realized we had to add a Californian sensibility to,” Björn said. “That isn’t to say what we we serve isn’t German food but there was definitely a small way we needed to play with it.”
That first point—”just sausage and beers”—downsizes just that. Long Beach had one place that was sort-of-kinda-sausage-and-beers and that was Congregation Ale House in DTLB. (And that was before the very awkward decision of its new owner to re-brand it as a Mexican cocina.) A handful of sausage plates and pretzels played alongside Long Beach’s growing craft beer scene for the Congregation. But when it came to a proper German sausage—say, Hungarian debrezineror käsekrainer? There was zilch. And proper German beer? Like an Erdinger weissbier or Rothaus’s stellar pilsner, Tannenzäpfle? Crickets.
Rasselbock has now grown into a Long Beach-wide food institution
Pretzel by potato pancake, schnitzel by spätzle, Rasselbock took on what has become one of the most loyal legions of local patrons. And along with it—myself included—a constant reference point toward visitors as to where to go that is, well, very Long Beach.
“I know one of the things I love most is having witnessed how much Rasselbock has connected with such a variety of people,” Björn said. “All ethnicities, all ages. People have turned Rasselbock into a place of celebration: graduations, birthdays, special date nights. It’s a place where people go when they don’t want to cook. People have proposed multiple times in Rasselbock… The Long Beach location has become an extraordinary place.”
The Bixby Knolls space reflects a side of German food that is becoming increasingly hard to find in Germany proper.
The witnessing of the majority of Long Beach getting down on a beer’n’brat… Or a plate of their schnitzel… Or a Bavarian pretzel with the house-made array of mustards… These simple German plates are largely missing from the formal restaurant landscape in Germany, where traditional food has been relegated to the table at home.
“In all honesty, it’s not that easy to find German food in Germany because most of the restaurants are other cuisines,” Björn said when asked if he, when returning to Germany annually, explores the trends in German cuisine and applies those modernizations here at Rasselbock. His response starkly contrasts with what many immigrant Long Beach restaurants do, from David Copley annual R&D trip to the motherland for the Irish-centric Auld Dubliner to the Procaccini family’s perpetual bounce between Roma and Long Beach for La Parolaccia.
“In the biggest cities, we’re talking about Greek, Italian, Indian, Palestinian—everything but German food,” Björn said. “Berlin has some staples, sure, but Germans aren’t going to get German find. They go out to get something else. You eat German food mostly at home; you make it yourself. It’s kind of funny but it’s how it is.”
In that sense, it makes the food of Rasselbock even cooler if not outright a needed protector, keeping the idea of a traditional German fare space alive.
The food of Rasselbock is simultaneously traditionally German and very, well, Californian
This ultimately means that the aforementioned “Californian sense” Björn brought up? It comes into play here.
“My wife often mocks me because I really do become analytical in Germany,” Björn said. “I want to see if they’re doing anything different or get some ideas from here or there. But the German cuisine in Germany is pretty traditional—so the experimentation really comes from being here. It’s a part of what makes Rasselbock special.”
That means playing with seasonal ingredients to create specials while also sticking to traditional guns. There’s a vegan schnitzel directly next to a schnitzel slathered in a wild mushroom cream sauce before being topped with an egg. There’s a “Dude’s Salad”—German fries topped with feta, cucumber, tomato, red onion, pepperoncini, bell pepper, black olives, and garlic aioli—next to goulash soup and currywurst.
The plays on new-school and old-school are viably playing on a menu that is simultaneously as German as it is, well, Californian. And this success of these two worlds merging Björn is taking on yet another concept: Kiez-Küche & Beer Garden in Highland Park.
But before jumping on that, maybe just focus on what is in the now—that mainly being Rasselbock here in Long Beach.They are indeed participating in this year’s Long Beach Food Scene Week and are offering up a play on a burger dubbed “The 405 Burger.” Already a stellar space for burgers, this one plays with sauerkraut, white cheddar, dill pickle… It’s a sour lover’s dream.
And even if that isn’t your cup of pilsner, explore Long Beach’s most vast and rich German menu.
Rasselbock is located at 4020 Atlantic Ave.
