The Berghoff

What is The Berghoff?

The Berghoff is a sit-down restaurant in the heart of downtown Chicago, a few steps from some of the city's major museums. Its reputation rests on German food; dishes long tied to the place include apple strudel, sauerbraten, creamed spinach and wiener schnitzel.

The service has its own story. For much of the restaurant's life, its waiters were career professionals who wore formal cloth aprons and kept orders in their heads instead of on a notepad. The house also followed a European arrangement in which waiters bought dishes from the kitchen with tokens and then sold them on to diners.

History of The Berghoff

Herman Joseph Berghoff opened the business in 1898 as a saloon. When Prohibition made serving alcohol illegal, the kitchen's German cooking became the main draw.

For decades the Berghoff kept a bar reserved for men. That rule ended in 1969, when a group of seven women from the National Organization for Women stood at the bar and insisted on being served, joined a little later by Gloria Steinem. Thirty years on, in 1999, the James Beard Foundation added the Berghoff to its America's Classics, an honor for long-running family restaurants.

Visiting The Berghoff: tips

The downtown location makes the restaurant easy to combine with a walking tour of the Loop before or after the first miles of Route 66. Allow an hour or more for a meal. Three museums are close by: the Pritzker Military Museum & Library and the Art Institute of Chicago are each about 0.2 mile away, and the Chicago Design Museum about 0.3 mile away.