Schmidt’s Sausage Haus

This is our «go to» place while visiting Columbus. Great food and beer, cozy atmosphere, staff wears traditional german attire, etc. Expect a wait, but it’s well worth it. I love the traditional bratwurst and german potato salad (which tastes just like potato salad i had in east berlin over 20 years ago!) Cream puffs are sinful too!

YUMMY!!!
That is the most delicious food. Everything was good and the atmosphere is just as good. Must go every time we’re in Cowtown.

2 hour wait on a Saturday at 5PM. This is how this adventure began. We pull up to the quaint part of Columbus, OH know as the German Village, home of my favorite spot, Thurmans Café. We have to street park because we had no idea what to expect or if there was on site parking. When we get up there I do spy a parking lot, but it looked pretty full. As we get to the front door, there is a 20 – 30 person line. After asking around, you have to fight through this crowd to get in the door and fight the mob inside to get to the hostess stand. My buddy Andy helped facilitate our name getting on the list. 1 hour 15 minute wait, with this crowd… that did not seem bad. We were lucky it was a nice day in February so waiting outside, where there are speakers to hear your name, was not bad. There is a nice candy and fudge shop that is owned by the restaurant just a 2 second walk away so we headed over there. We found out you could hear the names they were calling much clearer around this building. We killed 30 – 45 minutes in there and was hoping we would be close to being called. We see people coming out that we saw go in when we got there so we were ready. Tick tock, tick tock. Our 1 hour 15 minutes is up. The sun goes down and it is time to head inside. Stuffed to the gills. No room in the small waiting area, but we make our in there anyway and fight the masses. Our name is still like a page away. Finally after 2 to 300 excuse me’s, we are seated. Servers are dressed in the Oktoberfest best. We were seated right by the buffet so that was convenient. We get our drink orders in and we are off to the buffet. 3 kinds of sausage, sauerkraut, green beans and spatzel, cabbage, salad, sausage stew, fried chicken, mashed potatoes. Not as big as I thought it would be. The food was good but not 2 hours good. I have waited this long for places and usually they blow you away, but Schmidts was just blah. I feel like I could have gotten an eckridge smoked sausage and it would have tasted similar. I wanted to like this place, but will never fight the crowd again.

If you’ve ever seen the TV show «Man vs. Food» you know about this restaurant. It was featured when Adam went to Columbus. On a recent trip to Columbus for work, I decided that I had to stop. A sausage buffet?! Yes, please!
The buffet is called ‘The Autobahn’ and looks waaaay bigger on TV. What doesn’t? It’s not bad for $ 9 (lunchtime). They have a small salad bar, 4 – 5 different types of sausage (bratwurst, bahama mama, etc.), several sides (red cabbage, saurkraut, german potato salad, etc.) and a sausage stew.
My rating is merely based on the actual taste of the food. I would give the service and selection 3 stars, but the only decent sausage is the Bahama Mama, which is a bit spicy. Everything else is rather bland.
Their ginormous cream puffs are pretty well known in the area, but I wasn’t too impressed with them either. Bigger does not always mean better. The pastry was rather tough and the cream filling was more along the lines of a cooked crisco frosting.