Yorkville's Best Wursts (and More) at The Stube
UPPER EAST SIDE, NYC | Yorkville, previously Germantown, proudly boasts one of the best butcher's in all five boroughs of New York City, Schaller & Weber. The still very traditionalist "pork store" has been a neighborhood staple and go-to for almost 90 years, and has never shown any signs of slowing down the usual frenetic pace of local patrons who have frequent the butcher shop for generations.
Miraculously, they have done something extraordinary: co-owners Jeremy Schaller and Jesse Denis reimagined a former storage and display space—in the admittedly old school business—into a modern, urbane version of a quickly popular sandwich shop, Schaller's Stube, serving a variety of grilled-to-order wursts, brats, and wieners in house rolls, adorned and accompanied with a number of fresh ingredients, spanning evocation of German and non-German culinary cultures.
The chef behind the menu is creatively skilled Alex Melnichenko, making even commonly unknown tubed meats like weisswurst and bauernwurst accessible to the currently very food curious younger and/or new-to-Yorkville demographic, with iterations such as The Berlin Wall (kielbasa with American cheese, bacon jam, and chicharones), a Steuben Reuben (beef weiner with swiss, sauerkraut, Stube sauce), and a banh mi reminiscent Saigon Special (bauernwurst, daikon-radish slaw, cucumber, jalapeño, cilantro, sriracha aoili).
And as this neighborhood boasts a younger demographic tenancy then pretty much every former decade, Schaller's Stube being open late(r than the pork shop) means that revelers can get a deliciously rounded and layer bite to help them refuel or assist the following morning's recovery).
Schaller & Weber's near century-long tenure has kept it one of the last bastions of German food authenticity left in this ever-gentrifying (and homogenizing) city. Here's hoping the Stube's tasty, traditional-yet-imaginative menu can keep it authentic and relevant for several more generations.
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SCHALLER'S STUBE | 1654 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10028 | (212) 879-3047 | schallerstube.com
