Ol' Heidelberg has been on Jefferson Street in downtown Huntsville since 1975, making it one of the oldest continuously operating restaurants in the city. It serves a straightforward menu of German-American fare — sausages, schnitzel, sauerkraut, and a selection of German beers — in a comfortable setting that has barely changed in decades. The kitchen is not experimental, and that is the point: reliable, well-executed Central European cooking in a city that does not have much of it.
The restaurant draws a loyal regular crowd and is busiest for dinner on weekends. The beer selection is better than most places in north Alabama, with German lagers and hefeweizens on tap alongside the usual domestic options. It is one of those places that exists in every university and tech town — an eccentric holdout from an earlier era that survives precisely because it never tried to be fashionable.