Tasha Does Tulsa.

Last week a couple of local bloggers and I met up at Fassler Hall. It’s something we like to do once each month or so, get together to talk shop, throw back a few beers and chow down on some good grub from a locally owned restaurant.

And by “a couple of local bloggers” I really mean about 50 of them. We’re like sorority girls – we travel in flocks.

We were pretty happy with where we flocked for this month’s meetup: Fassler Hall, the newest edition of the McNellie’s spin-off series that opened earlier this month in downtown’s Blue Dome District at 304 S. Elgin Ave. The folks there invited our little meetup in for a visit and a fancy, schmancy sausage sampling session.

And we’re never the types to turn down an invitation to eat, drink, be merry and generally invade someplace.

Fassler Hall is a pretty curious little spot, really. It’s basically a giant, open space filled with super-sized picnic tables and a bar on one side. And rather than getting one of those fancy tables all to yourself, you share it with future friends – in other words, people you’ve never met before. It’s called communal seating, and apparently it’s something that’s done pretty often over in those Europe-y types of places.

Which made Fassler an ideal spot for our group to have one of our more casual meetings there. It’s a mixer-and-mingler’s dream. It also creates situations in which a random patron offers a certain blogger a bite of his birthday cake, over which he was exclaiming and gesticulating wildly and couldn’t help but attract said blogger’s comment along the lines of, well dang, if that cake is that good, then I want a bite. And she, not wanting to be rude, took that bite when it was so offered.

And the blogger lived. She might have worried for a few days that she’d eaten something caustic, but we all know what they say about worrying, and I’ve yet to find out if it added a day to my – I mean, this blogger’s – life.

I know. I’m a crazy, crazy, wild woman. Who takes cake from strangers? This girl.

Sometimes we try to have some kind of professional development component at our meetings, or even a blogger open mic so that everyone has a chance to take advantage of the captive audience and talk a little bit about his/her blog. There was none of that this time. Fassler Hall is a very loud, very crowded place. But there was lots of beer.

And lots and lots of wieners, too.

The menu at Fassler is just like how I like my jeans in the hiney area – tight, and with no allowance for fluff. I’m not one of those people who prefers a 12-page menu. To me, that screams insecurity. I’d rather a restaurant pick a few things that they’re really good at and pimp the heck out of just those things. We don’t need no stinkin’ watered down menus, and we certainly don’t need anyone having to take 20 minutes of their lives to decide what they want off of a thesis-sized selection of plates.

There are all of three items on the Fassler Hall menu – Sausage, Frites and Pretzels. The sausage part of the menu offers six types from which to choose, not counting any special sausages on the chalkboard over the bar. While the Habanero Chicken ($5.50) and the Andouille ($5.50) were tempting, I opted for the Beef Frank ($5.50 – seeing a pricing trend here?).

Check out the photo above and you’ll see that it’s served Chicago-style with pickle, sport pepper, tomato, onion, yellow mustard and celery salt on a poppy seed bun. Except that I didn’t get the poppy seeds on my bun, but whatever. It was still one choice wiener.

Pair one of the sausages I just mentioned with an order of the Frites ($4) – about two fists full of fries fried in delicious, flavorful, sinful duck fat – and a Marshall Pavilion Pilsner on draft ($6 for a 1/2 liter, $12 for the full) and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice little meal, my friend.

Added to the menu since the night we bloggers took over the place is an offering of live music on the weekends. Another member of the McNellies franchise is The Colony, which has become known as one of the very best places in this area of the state for top-shelf local music. My hope is that Fassler can start to build the same sort of reputation. I think that it’s their hope, too. Fassler is in a choice location and weighs in at a size that could both allow for intimate concert experiences as well as attract some of the larger, more regional acts into the Blue Dome District. I can’t wait to see if they can pull it off.

The next time you’re trolling for a new bar or restaurant to try and you think you might like to hear some live tunes, swing by Fassler and see what’s up.

After all, more than four dozen bloggers can’t be wrong.

Fassler Hall
304 S. Elgin Ave.
4pm-2am, seven days
(918) 576-7898
FasslerHall.com