The best German restaurant in Fredericksburg, and how to eat between tastings
Der Lindenbaum, The Auslander, Otto's and Altstadt compared, plus which wine tours put lunch inside the ticket and which hand the meal back to you.
By Robert Schneider, Fredericksburg wine tour specialist & Hill Country experience guide
Fredericksburg was laid out in 1846 by German immigrants who came over under the Adelsverein, and the kitchens never let go of it. Four German restaurants still trade here, three of them serving schnitzel in one form or another, all of them inside a historic district that holds 700 historically significant structures. So the real question is not whether you can eat German food in this town. It is whether the wine tour you booked leaves you a window to do it.
That split is sharper than most visitors expect. Some tours put a sit-down lunch inside the ticket price. Others hand you three wineries, a driver and nothing to eat, which is fine if you planned for it and rough if you did not.
What is the best German restaurant in Fredericksburg, TX?
Der Lindenbaum is the usual answer for traditional German food in Fredericksburg: schnitzels, steaks and sandwiches served inside a historic limestone building. The Auslander leans Bavarian, Otto's German Bistro cooks farm-to-table versions of the same tradition, and Altstadt Brewery was named Brewery of the Year at the 2026 Texas Craft Brewers Cup.
No single answer survives contact with four different kitchens, so here is the honest split.
Der Lindenbaum is the one most people mean when they ask the question. Traditional German specialties, schnitzels above all, plus steaks and sandwiches, served in a limestone room old enough to do half the work for the food. If you want the postcard version of a German lunch in a German-founded Texas town, that is the room.
The Auslander is the Bavarian-leaning option, with steaks and sandwiches sitting alongside the German plates. It reads as restaurant and bar rather than formal dining room, which matters more than it sounds when there are eleven of you and a shuttle idling somewhere.
Otto's German Bistro takes the same tradition in a different direction. The kitchen works farm-to-table, and the plates it sends out, gravlax, rösti, sausages with sauerkraut, are lighter and more composed than a full schnitzel platter. With three tastings still ahead of you, that difference is not small.
Altstadt Brewery is the outlier, and for one specific group it is the correct answer. It brews German-style beers, serves food with them, and has a Biergarten. It also took Brewery of the Year at the 2026 Texas Craft Brewers Cup, which is an external verdict rather than a line of marketing. If somebody in your party has quietly had enough of wine by four in the afternoon, that is where you take them.
| Kitchen | What it does | Room and format | When it fits a wine day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Der Lindenbaum | Traditional German: schnitzels, steaks, sandwiches | Sit-down, historic limestone building | A full lunch hour before pickup, or a proper meal after drop-off |
| The Auslander | Bavarian cuisine, steaks and sandwiches | Restaurant and bar, easier with a group | Your tour ends mid-afternoon and you want a late lunch |
| Otto's German Bistro | Farm-to-table German: gravlax, rösti, sausages and sauerkraut | Bistro plates, lighter than a platter | You are eating before the tastings and do not want to feel it at stop three |
| Altstadt Brewery | German-style beers with food | Biergarten, outdoor tables, beer-led | Wine is finished for the day, or somebody never wanted it |
Which Hill Country wine tours include lunch, and which do not?
Four tours listed on this site build lunch into the ticket: the all-inclusive cable car day at $149, the boutique small-group day at $239, the customizable three-winery day at $229, and the 19th Hole day at $325. The Cowboy Tours bus carries snacks and water but no lunch, and the limousine tours feed you nothing at all.
The gap between those two groups is the whole reason this page exists. A tour that covers lunch and every tasting fee is buying you a fixed day at a fixed price. A tour that covers neither is buying you a driver, which is genuinely worth paying for, and leaving the rest of the day open.
| Tour | Lunch | From price | What you still pay for on the day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cable car all-inclusive social day, 5h, 3 wineries | Included | $149 pp | Nothing at the wineries, tastings are covered |
| Boutique small-group day, 5.5h, max 10 | Included | $239 pp | Tastings covered |
| Three wineries, customizable, 5.5h | Included | $229 pp | Tastings covered |
| 19th Hole, 3 stops from 11:30, max 14 | Included, with snacks | $325 pp | Tastings covered |
| Cowboy Tours bus, 3 wineries, 4 to 5 pours each | Not included, snacks and water aboard | $199 pp | Your own lunch, before or after |
| Private Sprinter, 4h, up to 11 people | Offered as a paid extra | $475 per group | Lunch, if you add it |
| Stretched limousine days, 5h, 3 stops | Not included | $99 pp | Tastings paid at each bar, plus lunch |
| Private custom day, 6h, up to 11 people | Not included | $850 per group | Tastings at every stop, plus lunch |
Read that table twice before you decide the $149 day is the expensive one. It is not.
Where do you eat if your tour does not feed you?
Start and finish downtown. The Cowboy Tours bus leaves from the rear lot at the visitor center, which puts you inside the restaurant grid at both ends of the day, and the San Antonio day trips build free time on Main Street into the itinerary. Both shapes leave a real window for a sit-down meal.
The mistake is treating lunch as something you will sort out mid-tour. You will not. Once the vehicle is moving between wineries on the 290 corridor, the stops are the stops, and the only food is whatever the operator packed. On the Cowboy Tours bus that means snacks and water, which handles the shakiness and does nothing for hunger.
After a decade of running tasting days out here, the shape I trust most is an early lunch. Eat at noon, be picked up at one, and let three rooms of wine land on a stomach that has seen a plate. The alternative, which plenty of people choose deliberately, is to book a tour that finishes mid-afternoon and walk straight into a late meal while the dining rooms are quiet and the Saturday crowd has thinned.
If you would rather not think about any of it, the all-inclusive tours that cover lunch and tastings remove the decision entirely, and you can see the current price and available dates before you commit to a fixed day.
Coming up from the south changes the calculation again. The day trips up from San Antonio run roughly ninety minutes each way and deliberately park free time in town, so the meal happens in Fredericksburg rather than at a winery, and you choose the kitchen yourself.
Should you eat before the tastings or after?
Before, in almost every case. A tour with three wineries and four to five pours at each stop puts twelve to fifteen tastes in front of you across a single afternoon, and the first one lands not long after pickup. Eat first, drink second, and treat any meal at the end of the day as dinner rather than rescue.
Some arithmetic helps here. The Cowboy Tours format runs four to five pours at each of three wineries. Even at a modest measure, that is a real quantity of wine spread across an afternoon, and it is why the vehicle exists in the first place.
The legal side is worth stating plainly, because it is the part visitors guess at. Texas sets the drinking age at 21 and puts the driving limit at 0.08 blood alcohol under Penal Code sections 49.04 and 49.01. Section 49.031(c) of the same chapter exempts passengers of a bus, taxicab or limousine operated for compensation from the open container offence, which is the legal footing under a chartered wine shuttle. Wineries pour under Alcoholic Beverage Code Chapter 16 permits. None of that changes what a schnitzel does for you at stop three, but it does explain why the driver stays dry and you do not have to.
What else is worth eating here besides German food?
Peaches, in season. Gillespie County peaches run mid-May through mid-August, with the peak between mid-June and late July, and roadside stands and orchards operate through the whole window. Outside that, the Main Street grid carries the rest of the town's eating, all of it inside the same walkable historic district.
Peach season reorganises a summer wine day more than people expect. Stands open along the approach roads, orchards sell direct, and a bag of fruit becomes the between-wineries food that no operator packs. It also lands in the hottest part of the year, which is its own argument for an air-conditioned vehicle and a lunch that is not a fried cutlet.
One scheduling note that catches people out. Fredericksburg Trade Days runs monthly on the weekend of the third Saturday, Friday through Sunday, out at 355 Sunday Farms Lane with a $5 parking fee. Those weekends pull extra crowds into town, and if your tasting day falls on one, book the table before you book the tour. The same logic applies to the one-day plan for the town, where the restaurant window is the tightest part of the schedule.
How do you build a wine day around a real meal?
Pick the tour shape first, then the kitchen. An all-inclusive day fixes lunch and every tasting fee at one price. A driver-only tour costs less up front and asks you to plan a meal, pay tasting fees at each bar, and hold a table you can actually reach between stops.
Two day shapes work, and they are genuinely different products rather than cheaper and dearer versions of the same thing.
The fixed day starts late morning, includes a lunch you did not choose, covers every pour, and ends in the afternoon with nothing left to pay. It suits groups, first visits and anyone who does not want to negotiate a restaurant with five other people at 12:40. The open day starts wherever you like, costs less on the ticket, and puts the meal entirely in your hands. It suits repeat visitors, couples with a favourite kitchen, and anyone who came to town for a specific room rather than a specific vineyard.
The tour that sits precisely between them is the Cowboy Tours bus. It covers four to five pours at each of three wineries, carries snacks and water, cancels free up to 24 hours out, and pointedly does not feed you. You can check its current departures and price and then book the table around it, which is the right order.
Before you decide, run the numbers rather than the instinct. A full price breakdown by tour sets the ticket prices against what each one actually covers, what a tasting flight actually costs puts a figure on the fees you pay yourself, and why the town costs what it does explains the weekend pricing that pushes both lunch and lodging up. A schnitzel and three flights add up faster than one ticket does.