When I can’t look at another plate of pasta, there’s nothing like a real ethnic neighborhood place (Italian restaurants having become too mainstream to qualify), especially one with singing and dancing, to refresh my palate. Invariably, they’re Eastern European, Greek, or German. I’m stymied as to the common denominator. Greeks and Eastern Europeans have a reputation for being emotional, full of joie de vivre–but Germans? But there they are at Chicago Brauhaus in Lincoln Square, noisily eating, drinking, table hopping, and dancing to “Lili Marlene.” They polka, they rhumba, they samba and waltz, and–this is why my hairdresser loves this place–they even do a folk dance called the Chicken. Not to be confused with the Funky Chicken, it’s a kind of square dance where every once in a while the dancers stop and imitate a you-know-what.
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Chicago Brauhaus is seriously German, no redundancy intended, with its oak-paneled dining room, hunting-scene prints, beer steins, and Wagnerian-proportioned waitresses. Any doubts about the ethnic origins of most of the customers were laid to rest when the musicians sang happy birthday first to Ingeborg, then Irma, then Max–and ultimately Adolph.
A Saturday-night visit was a different story. The restaurant was jammed with gemutlich revelers, the service correspondingly slow, and the food not nearly as good. As with several of the other tables, ours was a family party. The three ladies drank ladylike Chablis; the guys and I drank imported German beer. The ladies also unhelpfully all ordered the same main course, baked chicken ($9.95), which, circumstances notwithstanding, was your basic pallid, flavorless hotel Passover fowl, accompanied by fried potatoes and overcooked green beans. In contrast, my liver dumpling soup was terrific, the dumpling delicate enough to float in its clear consomme. Then my luck ran out. My sauerbraten ($10.95) was a disaster, thin slices of beef drowned in a lake of gravy, and way too sauer, although the accompanying spaetzle were firm and buttery. The salad, iceberg lettuce with a couple of pale tomato chunks, was coated with a dressing that could have passed for Kraft or Wishbone. Smoked pork loin ($10.95) tasted, boringly, like pork.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/J. Alexander Newberry.
