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Berghoff Restaurant, Chicago - It's closing

wigs21

By wigs21
in The Heartland: Dining

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ronnie_suburban

ronnie_suburban

Posted
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Welcome, Expressa, to the eGS.

I think that your feelings about the food at the Berghoff are shared by plenty of folks. I have a few downtown-working friends who go there regularly, order from a culled group of reliable standards, and never venture beyond that for fear of disappointment.

Unlike a lot of places we discuss here, this is one about which pretty much everyone in town has an opinion as well as his or her own personal history. When I talk to folks I continually pick up on a sense of restrained sadness. "No, I haven't been there in years but I remember when I first moved to town . . ." or "Man, I can't believe how much time I used to spend there at the bar" are the types of things I'm hearing quite a bit these days.

=R=

"Hey, hey, careful man! There's a beverage here!" --The Dude, The Big Lebowski

LTHForum.com -- The definitive Chicago-based culinary chat site

ronnie_suburban 'at' yahoo.com

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ojbowl

ojbowl

Posted
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ode to the berghoff restaurant, auf wiedersehen

Myself, and a couple others from Kendall college stopped in there last week to pay our respects. I am not going to comment on the food, however, i will comment on the homemade rootbeer and beer. I had a few of both, and by golly i enjoyed it thoroughly, it was a afternoon delight. I will make one comment about the creamed spinich; it tasted like a instant rayman noodle package with chicken broth. Diner is not all about the food, but also the company that you bring. I had a wonderful time.

evan

Animals eat, men and women dine, and men and women of good taste dine well"

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lalala

lalala

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We're flying to Chicago tomorrow night to eat at the Berghoff. It was a place that my TH would go with her parents and it means a lot to her that we go. I am not too taken with their food, but the waitstaff that we have met has been really nice and I'll be sorry to see it go.

I hope the weather cooperates.

lalala

I have a relatively uninteresting life unless you like travel and food. Read more about it here.

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Alex

Alex

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I've been to the Berghoff only once, last year with Lady T and maggiethecat + spouse. I loved the root beer and was thoroughly underwhelmed by the food, but I appreciated the history and the ambience and how much the place meant to my native Chicagoland companions.

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

"...in the mid-’90s when the internet was coming...there was a tendency to assume that when all the world’s knowledge comes online, everyone will flock to it. It turns out that if you give everyone access to the Library of Congress, what they do is watch videos on TikTok."  -Neil Stephenson, author, in The Atlantic

 

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer

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ronnie_suburban

ronnie_suburban

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I drove by the Berghoff today at around 12:15 and the line of folks waiting to get in stretched out the door and westward for the better part of a city block -- nearly all the way down to the corner of Adams and Dearborn. Yowza! :shock:

=R=

"Hey, hey, careful man! There's a beverage here!" --The Dude, The Big Lebowski

LTHForum.com -- The definitive Chicago-based culinary chat site

ronnie_suburban 'at' yahoo.com

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lalala

lalala

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Posted
I drove by the Berghoff today at around 12:15 and the line of folks waiting to get in stretched out the door and westward for the better part of a city block -- nearly all the way down to the corner of Adams and Dearborn.  Yowza! :shock:

=R=

Hah. I was in that line at 7 pm last night with a nice 26 degree temp to go with it (wimp from Seattle that I am). When we got there they said that it would 2.5 hours which was fine (right), but at 8:15 they started to pull 2 tops out of line and we were picked. Got a great table and the food, though not stellar was good and it was nice to get back there. The apple strudel was very yummy and believe or not, so was their coffee.

lala

I have a relatively uninteresting life unless you like travel and food. Read more about it here.

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Sweet Willie

Sweet Willie

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Was fortunate to go with a group of 14 last month, we had plans for another night in late Feb so I tried to make reservations. I was told that ALL reservations have been taken from now until closing.

There are certainly some better dishes than others at The Berghoff, but if you are not having a good time while there you must be dead, what a blast!!

--

"I did absolutely nothing and it was everything I thought it could be"
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