Georgia Beer Garden Revamps Its Food and Adds a Backyard Biergarten Trailer

Georgia Beer Garden (GBG), owned by Joystick Gamebar’s Brandon Ley and Johnny Martinez, on Edgewood Avenue released a new food menu, and added a Bauhaus-inspired, pop-up biergarten trailer to the backyard.

The biergarten trailer

Officially known as the “Wiesn in a Box,” the trailer is on loan from the Goethe-Instituts of America in conjunction with “Wunderbar Together” — a year-long celebration of art, culture, events, and business between Germany and America.

The traveling Oktoberfest is stationed in the backyard at GBG until September 15. It’s currently only pouring beers on the weekends, but Ley and Martinez hope to expand those hours this summer.

Georgia Beer Garden

What’s new on the menu

In addition to several new dishes, chef Jonathan Canales created three separate menus for GBG: Lunch, starting at 11 a.m., happy hour at 4 p.m., and dinner, beginning at 6 p.m.

Almost half of the dishes now offered at GBG lean vegetarian, including new items such as the grilled carrot chips with dill yogurt sauce, a sharable plate of pickled okra, black-eyed pea “hummus” and crudités, and an arugula salad.

An entree size “garden loaf” is also new to the menu. It’s basically a meatless meatloaf made from black-eyed peas and kidney beans, topped with curried mustard, carrot straws, and served with charred green beans.

Other additions to the menu include the bierocks, a Hot Pocket-like take on a savory German stuffed roll filled with barbecue chicken or sweet hash, made from sweet potatoes, Brussel sprouts, and apples, a sort of warm spice blend Brunswick stew called “Southern Curry”, as well as a ten-ounce smoked pork chop.

Take a look at the new menus:

Georgia Beer Garden opened in 2016 in an early 20th century building on Edgewood, once home to an animal hospital dating back to the 1920s. Ley and Martinez say they’ve admired the old building since opening Joystick across the street in 2012. The partners “struck up a friendship” with Beverlee Pleasants, who lived above the animal clinic with her father, a veterinarian. When Pleasants’ father eventually retired and put the building up for sale, the partners decided to open GBG there.

The bar offers 24 rotating taps and close to 100 beers and ciders in bottles and cans, focusing on the Georgia brewing industry. That focus also extends to the majority of the spirits behind the bar.

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