Review: Flabby's Schnitzelburg

The Meatloaf Plate Lunch with corn pudding and cucumber salad served at Flabby's. (Credit: Sam Upshaw Jr.)

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Claims to fame are so common in American restaurants that hardly anybody takes them seriously. But when the folks at Flabby’s Schnitzelburg, which has been serving fried chicken, beer, and assorted blue plate fare in the heart of Germantown for going on sixty years, makes such a claim, it has the ring of truth.

Earlier this year, an editor at Saveur magazine included Flabby’s on list of Louisville’s “best bar food.” And a fine, well-informed list it was, too – it included not only the obvious targets, like Proof On Main and Jack’s Lounge, but local spots like Morris’ Deli and that other great Germantown institution, Check’s.

Of Flabby’s, the author wrote that it was “the platonic ideal of a neighborhood bar.” I don’t know about that; Flabby’s seems far too rooted in the visceral reality of its neighborhood to qualify as a “platonic idea.” It’s in a century-old building with tile floors, rickety tables, and a utilitarian bar. The walls are covered with bric-a-brac, photos of historic Louisville scenes, sports paraphernalia, and tributes to Flabby Devine, who founded the place in 1952 (Flabby’s is now owned by Greg Haner). The TVs are nearly always tuned to sports. And though I’ve never actually heard it clank or ring, every time I see the ancient wind chime made of old Falls City beer cans I hear faint echoes of the neighborhood’s past.

The food is hearty. The service is casual, but generally quick and always friendly. And when the staff is on the ball, the food admirably captures the best elements of southern vernacular cuisine. One night a generous bowl of white beans and greens was a warm and welcoming as the return of a long-lost friend. Kale, greens, the menu said, but my mother-in-law, Roberta, who has been cooking greens for more than sixty years, allowed as how they were almost certainly turnip greens. Never mind. Sprinkled with a bit of hot sauce and vinegar, you could call them platonic beans, and I wouldn’t quibble ($5.25). An enormous basket of fried chicken livers ($5.95) were just as good – crisp, peppery, tender.

For that matter, the kitchen demonstrates consistent mastery of all things fried. Autumn’s green tomatoes are tart and pebbly. Salmon croquettes are strictly old school – artifacts of the era when canned salmon was an exotic luxury in the heartland. And though salmon fashions have – thankfully - moved on, any student of 50s-style cuisine would recognize that these croquettes are faithful to their era ($6.95).

And as for fried chicken (available only Friday through Sunday), it’s covered in a superbly tender crust that breaks apart to reveal meat as sweet and juicy as a soak in buttermilk can make it (four pieces of chicken, with a couple of sides, runs $8.75; chicken only, $6).

Alas, though, Flabby’s suffers from that most perplexing of flaws: inconsistency. How is it that a kitchen capable of dishing up an exquisite oyster shooter (a shot glass stuffed with Chesapeake oysters and blazing hot sauce, $1.99) is also capable of serving bowls of chili ($2.25 with beans and spaghetti) that taste as if they were poured from the can of bitter memories. Why would a kitchen carve cucumbers into meticulous green and white stripes to make a vivid cucumber and onion salad, but cover an otherwise fine meatloaf ($5.95) in a dark brown gravy that wouldn’t pass muster in a frozen TV dinner? How can a kitchen dish up delicate, paper-thin slivers of eggplant parmesan, but serve chicken and dumplings, the Monday special ($2.50) at a temperature that would barely qualify as lukewarm?

I don’t know the answer to these important questions. But I’m pretty sure that with a bit more attention to detail, Flabby’s would deserve its fame every night of the week, and that would be a very good thing.

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