The oldest chicken grill at the Oktoberfest is also the largest of the small tents.
Those who stop by Ammer for a chicken may not only do so out of conviction, but also for generations. In 1885, Joseph Ammer, the great-great-grandfather of today's landlord, Joseph Schmidbauer, was granted his first Oktoberfest license after other applicants simply forgot to pay their deposit on time. And so began the long history of what was then the “first and largest chicken grill”. While today 15,000 to 17,000 chickens are sold at every Oktoberfest, in the early years the main business was to grill the chickens brought in by visitors for a fee.
Bringing your own chicken has long since gone out of fashion, and since 2000 only organic chicken has been served on the spits at the Ammer roastery. If you decide to eat there without knowing it, you should take a look at the menu in advance, as the organic chicken costs around 80% more than the conventional chicken in other tents. The lunch specials are also rather expensive. After the chicken scandal of 2009, the Ammer suppliers fortunately come from Bavaria and no longer from North Rhine-Westphalia.
While the interior is booked out every evening, as is usual with the small tents, you can often still get a seat in the beautiful inner courtyard beer garden, which offers space for 450 thirsty throats, when all the other gardens are already overcrowded. Augustiner's Oktoberfest beer is, of course, poured from wooden barrels.
In 2024, the music in the afternoon was shifted away from traditional pub music to (folk) schlager. Bayernhans plays on Mondays and Tuesdays from 12 to 5 pm, Exxtra Music on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Florian Bindner on Saturdays and October 4. On Sundays, however, Blas & Band, an proper brass band, plays. In the evening, the party band Sauwuid, which still traded under the name Saustoi in 2022, plays from 7 pm.