When an Internet food guru and James Beard award-winning cookbook author decides to venture into the business end of the business, the culinary world takes notice.

So circle Monday, March 12, on your calendar. That’s when the Peninsula’s resident food scientist, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, will premiere his Wursthall, a Germany-meets-California biergarten in downtown San Mateo.

For fans of Lopez-Alt who live vicariously through his culinary tests at the Serious Eats website or try to replicate recipes from his award-winning “The Food Lab” cookbook, this restaurant will provide them with a brick-and-mortar experience by which to judge this food phenom.

Many months in the making, the project by Lopez-Alt and partners Adam Simpson and Tyson Mao has transformed the historic building at Baldwin Avenue and B Street in downtown San Mateo that for years housed Ristorante Capellini.

A fan of beer-hall ambience, Lopez-Alt did a month-long research trip to Germany and Austria, aka “eating everything everywhere,” he says. When he returned to the Bay Area, he headed back into his kitchen and then tested recipes at pop-up events. He and his team experimented with mustard-braised pork, with pretzel-style epi rolls, with vegan kebabs — and with sausages by the score.

All those and more made the cut.

On the inaugural menu — where everything is house-made or crafted to the chef’s specifications — are nine international varieties of sausage, including three types of bratwurst. (To try six of them, order the Sausage Party.) Toppings include sauerkraut, speck-cherry pepper jam, sweet-and-sour peppers and onions, caramelized onions and apple-fennel chutney.

Sandwiches range from the aforementioned pork and vegan kebab to a chicken schnitzel made with sauerkraut-brined thighs and a sauerbraten one served with crispy bark. For sides, you can select from among Austrian potato salad, dill-marinated cucumbers, herb-lentil salad, parsley potatoes and sauerkraut.

Oh yeah, and this being a bier hall, there will be beer. And this being the Bay Area, wine and craft cocktails. Stay tuned for more on those offerings.