Larry Olmsted

Special for USA TODAY

The scene: It’s hard to believe, but until last week the Strip, the tourist epicenter of Las Vegas, was completely bereft of a beer hall or beer garden. In a city where alcohol flows like water, indoors and out, this seems like a fairly serious oversight (there is a beer garden in the old Downtown section of the city and a branch of Munich’s famed Hofbrauhaus beer hall off the Strip). The solution came with the recent opening of Beerhaus, part of a new pedestrianized park on Las Vegas Boulevard (the Strip) between the Monte Carlo and New York New York casino resorts.

The Park is a new “gathering spot” built by MGM Resorts to tie together its two adjacent resorts and the brand new T-Mobile Arena, a performance and sports venue set at the back end of The Park. Another smaller but still sizable venue, the Monte Carlo theater with about 5,000 seats, is under construction midway down The Park, opening later this year. The Park itself has a Nevada desert theme, with local plants, steel shade sculptures and seating throughout, plus lots of fountains, including a centerpiece walk-through cooling “water wall,” all made from locally mined stone. In the past three years Las Vegas has embraced a trend to get people outside more, with several other similar pedestrian zones such as Linq and the Strip-front Monte Carlo Plaza. The Park is the most accessible and user-friendly of these, a place that invites lingering.

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The Park features several new eateries, but all are chains like Shake Shack, except for Beerhaus, an original eatery run by MGM. It has ample indoor and outdoor seating, all at large picnic tables, with lots of glass looking out onto the Park’s social scene. Inside is a modern industrial warehouse feel with very high ceilings, lots of exposed ductworks, spinning ceiling fans and an open floor plan with a large island bar in the center. This bar is flanked by ping pong and bar shuffleboard tables, with tabletop games like Jenga and Connect Four available. The atmosphere is playful and social. There is table service only for drinks from the bar, which is beer-focused and features more than a hundred options, including many local brews, something underrepresented in Las Vegas.

For food, you get up and order from a corner window, they give you a buzzer, and everything is served in paper baskets with plastic utensils. As the waitress explained, “We’re not a restaurant, we’re a bar that serves food,” and at first glance the food side of Beerhaus seems like an oversight. It is not. The central, convenient location and indoor/outdoor options make it a great lunch spot, but it has quickly proven wildly popular before and after T-Mobile shows, since it is on the way in, open until 3 a.m., and last week was doing 2,000 meals nightly around the concerts.

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Reason to visit: Porchetta, roast potatoes and onions, pretzels with cheese dip, bratwurst

The food: Beer hall usually evokes a German, Czech or Polish image, but not so much here, where the only concession to such traditions are the mini soft pretzels with warm cheese dip and the Beerhaus Bratwurst (both excellent). The bulk of the meat-centric menu focuses on rotisserie cooking, but what really sets it apart is the sourcing, antibiotic- and hormone-free beef, pork and chicken. While drug-free protein is becoming increasingly popular at high-end Vegas eateries like Tom Colicchio’s Heritage Steak, it is still a rarity at these prices.

Considering the beer focus and lack of emphasis on culinary ambiance, the eats are exceptional and the concise menu has no weaknesses. The brats, stuffed with cheddar, are custom-made for the restaurant from its recipe, come in fresh (most bratwurst are precooked), and are much better than your supermarket variety — or even some I’ve had in Munich beer gardens. Instead of the unnaturally white, highly compressed interior found in most brats, these are grainier and pork-colored. But what really sets it off is the awesome bacon and onion jam each one comes topped with. All the rolls are made for Beerhaus by a local bakery and are much better than average. This is also true for the standout side order of pickles, a mix of half sour and bread and butter spears, made by Frost’s “pickle guy,” a New Jersey transplant who does nothing but make excellent pickles at a now guarded secret location in the Nevada desert.

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The rotisserie specialties are beef brisket, roast chicken and porchetta, a classic Italian rural dish in which a boneless pork roast is rolled or punctured and stuffed with a garlic and herb mixture before roasting. Chef Nathan Frost takes a whole pork belly slab, layers it with the garlicky mix, and rolls it up inside a boneless pork shoulder. He has created custom dry spice rubs for all three meats, and coats the exterior of the porchetta in this. After roasting it is sliced, each slice quickly crisp seared on a flattop grill, and the result is utterly delicious, the best of the three standout rotisserie eats. The half chicken (again all natural) is succulently moist and juicy with great skin flavor, and the pulled beef brisket sandwich with cheddar and spicy “atomic” cole slaw is also a winner. Frost cooks fingerling potatoes and sliced onions at the bottom of the rotisserie under the all the meat drippings, which are served with the porchetta and half chicken, and are unbelievable, among the best potatoes you can imagine. In the morning, they thin-shave the porchetta, griddle it and use it on a breakfast sandwich as an upscale ode to New Jersey’s classic Taylor Ham sandwiches.

Rounding out the main offerings are two more sausage efforts, the City Dog, a skinless Vienna beef frank topped with spicy mustard, kraut and standout homemade relish on one of the high-quality buns, and the Hot Link, a spicy red sausage in the style of a Washington, D.C., half smoke or Portuguese linguica, but with quite a spicy bite, a good choice for heat lovers, topped with a house-made pickle slaw. Each is perfectly accessorized with its condiments and a worthy order. Even the two simple dessert choices are standouts: red velvet whoopie pies and vanilla bean ice cream sandwiches between sugar cookies.

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Given its accessible location, built-in arena audience, vast beer selection, low prices, and the lack of competition for any similar concept, Beerhaus could easily have dished out frozen big-box sausages and run of the mill food and still would likely have succeeded. Instead, they serve curated fare far superior to most other fast causal offerings in the city at very reasonable prices, especially on the Strip, and this is a very welcome addition to Las Vegas.

Pilgrimage-worthy?: No, but if you want to eat and drink well on the Strip without wasting a lot of time or money, it’s a great choice, for lunch, dinner or late night — especially in nice weather.

Rating: Yum-Plus! (Scale: Blah, OK, Mmmm, Yum!, OMG!)

Price: $-$$ ($ cheap, $$ moderate, $$$ expensive)

Details: 3784 South Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas; 702-693-7275; theparkvegas.com/en/restaurants/beerhaus.html#/Menu

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Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an email at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.