Carlyn Berghoff

Nancy Ryan

Recreate customer favorite dishes from the popular Chicago eatery wherever you are with this collection of delicious recipes.

Family is everything, and so is food when it comes to the Berghoff family. The Berghoff Cafe food and drink, originated by Herman Berghoff more than 110 years ago, is the foundation of Berghoff tradition carried on today by great-granddaughter Carlyn Berghoff. Cafe fare is simple and satisfying, nothing fancy, and not at all fussy. You can still enjoy this same kind of food today at Chicago's Berghoff Cafe, either downstairs on Adams Street or at O’Hare International Airport.

The cafe food is built upon three principles that work in the restaurant as well as at home: reuse, recycle, and reinvent. The Berghoffs reuse their basics and waste nothing, so potatoes become Mashed Potatoes, Lyonnaise Potatoes, hash browns, Potato Salad, oven-roasted potatoes, potato pancakes, Potato Soup, french fries, and Smoked Sausage and Potato Pizza. They also recycle perfectly wholesome cooked foods so Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast stars in the Turkey Reuben, but there's also enough left for the Turkey Okra and Rice Soup and more.

The eighty recipes plus variations in The Berghoff Cafe Cookbook represent the full range of Berghoff Cafe food. There are recipes from Great-grandfather Herman’s cafe, updated for today's cook so they require less time and have fewer calories, alongside selections from today's cafe menu and customers' very favorite soups, salads, sandwiches, pizzas, and desserts. The recipes you'll find in this book are easy to prepare, look great on the plate, and are a pleasure to eat.

“Visitors to the Windy City almost inevitably flock for lunch or dinner to the Chicago Loop’s century-old Berghoff Café. Its warm, bustling, clubby atmosphere evokes nostalgia for bygone days of hearty eating and noisy drinking in the best German-American tradition . . . . Cooks who want to reproduce their Berghoff favorites will find complete instructions here for doing so, even to baking their own pretzels or rye bread, part of whose secret turns out to be dill seed instead of more common caraway.” —Booklist