Ludwig's is a German restaurant/bar located only a couple of blocks away from City Hall. The Phillytown.com crew visited this bar on a Saturday Night so the restaurant area was essentially closed but their bar, or tavern as they call it, was open and fairly crowed with 20 to 30something aged patrons.

As mentioned the tavern area was filled to the brim with seated patrons, a real SRO situation. Until a couple of seats at the bar were freed up, we were stuck standing. Since they pack the booths and tables pretty tight in the tavern area, we always seemed to be in the way of the wait staff. We should mention that only one of the waitresses was wearing the St. Pauli Girl attire. The two women behind the bar and a second waitress working the tavern were in their normal street clothes. All of the waitstaff were cute as heck - made me wish I don't know about you but when you go to an ethnic bar, it's nice to see everyone dressing the same. I guess I'm sort of disappointed that all of the women at Ludwig's weren't wearing the cleavage friendly St. Pauli Girl garb. Women wouldn't understand this, but every guy has a fantasy of dressing up his girl in a few costumes. One of the top 5 would have to be the St. Pauli Girl outfit - of course the #1 costume is the Princess Leia's metal bikini from the movie Return of the Jedi.  But I digress...

In a town full of English, Irish & Belgium pubs, Ludwig's Garden is one of the rare German offerings. True to it's brauhaus upbringings, Ludwig's gives you a slightly different pub experience: an Olde World bar, hops vines decorating the crown molding above the bar, enough different varieties of Jacquin's & De Kuyper schnapp's to make Colonel Klink jealous, Jeagermeister on tap, complimentary pretzel stix & cream cheese, Landjaeger (like a thick slim jim & only 75 cents) and beer out the wahzoo.

Did you say you wanted some German beer served up in a tall beer mug? Well look no further mein freund, Ludwigs has all of the primo German brews represented:  Paulaner, Celebrator, Warsteiner, Hacker-Pschorr Weisse, Beck's, St. Pauli Girl and Pilsner Urquell. Ok, Pilsner Urquell is really a beer from the Czech Republic, but who's counting? If you're not man or woman enough to handle the German beer, you can also get Amstel Lite, Coor's Lite, Yuengling Lager and Chimay Ale.

Just make sure that when you order your brewski, get yourself some of the pretzels and cream cheese. I think the only reason the ancients invented pretzels was to have something to eat while they swilled beer. Whatever the reason, beer and pretzels are a match made in heaven. If you're looking for a good deal on brews, Ludwig's hosts a Latenight Happy Hour from 11PM - 1AM nightly with $3 drafts and $9.50 pitchers.