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| There's a tradition in Europe that's been passed down for generations: every town has its share of gathering places, where people take time to meet with friends and enjoy life's small pleasures. In France, it's the cafes with their outdoor patios that line the sidewalks of towns large and small, where people talk, read and linger for hours. In Britain, it's the genteel and elegant tea rooms with their crumpets, scones and clotted cream. And Austria and Germany have their Konditorei, or pastry shops where you can search the enticing counters filled with sweets to take home, or sit down, relax and enjoy them with a coffee and a friend. |
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| Lincoln Square has its own Konditorei that has carried on this tradition in America since 1948. Lutz Cafe is not a bakery in the American sense—it features a full line of European-style pastries and tortes, handmade Swiss chocolates and a full menu of award-winning cuisine from countries across Europe, served in a charming dining room. The Lutz family has owned and operated it since it opened in the same year that the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce was founded. Now, Lutz Cafe is in the midst of a transition to the next generation that will keep its traditions alive, as it builds new fans of its wonderful recipes. |
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| The Lutz family has been baking since 1770, when Christian Lutz opened a pastry shop in a small town in Germany's Black Forest. Some of the recipes that Lutz produces today date back to that time, such as its popular holiday Christ-Stollen. Fred Lutz founded Lutz Cafe in Chicago in 1948 and ran it as a family business with his wife Muriel and daughter Helga. Since the family lived upstairs, Helga grew up helping in the shop from the time she was a young girl. By the late 1950s, Helga and her husband James Pearson were running the business with her parents. The 1960s brought the shop's first major expansion, when the Lutz family enlarged the store and introduced a cafe with a full menu. Today, Lutz Cafe occupies a full block and features an outdoor garden open, weather permitting, from Mother's Day through October. After years of success at Lutz Cafe, the Pearsons recently began thinking about how they would manage to continue the Lutz traditions. |
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 That's where John Tzortzis and Howard Gould came in. As longtime residents of Chicago's North Side, they were very familiar with Lutz and had fond memories of its pastries and sweets. "We thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to take these great products and reintroduce them to the neighborhood," explains Howard. As the Lincoln Square area has changed through the years, many of the original Lutz customers have moved away. Howard and John see this as a chance to let a whole new group of neighbors know about wonderful Lutz pastries, cakes and cuisine.
Since Howard and John joined the Pearsons at Lutz, all 45 of the original employees have stayed on, including the head baker who's worked there for 13 years. True to its cross-cultural traditions, Lutz is a veritable United Nations, with employees from Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Russia, Greece and Serbia, among other countries. Not a single Lutz recipe has changed or will change. And the Pearsons are still very much involved with the business. "The Pearsons are part of the business and always will be to make sure the quality is as high as always," says John. They often visit the dining room, greeting customers new and old. "We made a commitment that we would continue the traditions here and uphold the Lutz name," says Howard. "The Pearsons were willing to stay on and help us to make sure that everything is running smoothly." |
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| That's not to say that there won't be any changes at Lutz Cafe. Although they plan to keep making popular treats, Lutz will introduce some new items that represent the tastes of the next generation of customers. Starting in February, they will be running monthly specials and will serve breakfast on the weekends. "There are such great crepes we'll be offering, along with eggs and other traditional breakfast items," says John. "We're offering a fine breakfast at a great price." A musician now performs on weekends from 1pm to 3pm in the dining room. To complement the food, John and Howard have developed a full Lutz line of coffees roasted especially to enhance the flavors of the cuisine and pastries. To keep the coffees as fresh as can be, they are ground at the cafe the day they are brewed. They are also introducing a specially designed collection of loose leaf teas that patrons can brew at their tables. Both the coffees and the teas are available in the pastry shop to take home and brew yourself. |
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 What hasn't changed is the Lutz commitment to quality. Not a single recipe has changed. Like traditional European pastries, Lutz flavors are light, delicate and not cloyingly sweet. Everything is homemade at the bakery with natural ingredients and no preservatives. "We have a full time employee who just cuts strawberries all day long," says Howard. Lutz chocolate truffles are made in a special room that is cooled year round to keep the chocolate from melting. "We use the finest Swiss chocolate to make them," says Howard. "We pay about five times more per pound for our raw ingredients than many chocolatiers." In place of cheap sugar flowers, Lutz cakes traditionally feature marzipan foliage, which is handmade in the same room where the chocolates are made. At the holidays, Lutz has one of the widest selections of marzipan figurines in the city, with everything from snowmen and angels, to apples and mushrooms. They still make labor-intensive treats like the traditional German Baumkuchen, a special almond flavored cake that is cooked layer by layer inside a spit-like machine that the Lutz family imported from Germany. When sliced, all 17 layers of cake make the inside of a Baumkuchen look like the rings of a tree. Lutz sells a plain version and a chocolate covered version. |
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| When you're sitting in the cafe for a peaceful meal, you have no idea of the hustle and bustle that goes on behind the scenes at Lutz. Most of the space inside the building houses the large-scale bakery production area, where the staff makes everything from cookies to tortes. There's a huge oven that holds up to 48 trays at once. Each baker works on a long table stocked with blocks of butter and raw ingredients. The staff comes in at 3am and works until 11am, when the cleaning crew comes in and prepares everything to start all over again the next morning. |
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| It's a busy Saturday afternoon at Cafe Lutz. While shoppers file in and out to pick up their birthday cakes and breakfast pastries, the dining room is filled with couples and families having a leisurely lunch with soft classical guitar playing in the background. A father sits with his two young daughters who are enjoying a slice of cake. Howard and John ask the server to send the girls a selection of cookies on the house. As they leave, the youngest girl approaches Howard and John and says with an ear-to-ear smile, "Thank you for the cookies and cake—they were delicious!" |
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| Anyone with a passion for sweets should be sure to visit Lutz Cafe and Pastry Shop. You'll be amazed at the varieties of cookies, pastries, stollen, fruit kuchen, tortes and truffles that fill its counters. Stop in for a cup of coffee and a pastry in the morning, or stay for a leisurely weekend breakfast. Pick up a cake for your next celebration or have a meal at the cafe, followed by your choice of dessert from the pastry case. And don't forget to visit the Lutz Cafe website, which will soon give sweet lovers everywhere the chance to buy certain Lutz items and have them shipped directly to their homes. Thanks to the Pearsons, John and Howard, an entirely new generation of people will be able to enjoy the treats at Lutz. |
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| Read more profiles in the Member of the Month Archives |
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