Lüchow’s

In the 1880s, when New York City’s Union Square was a cultural crossroads—home to the Academy of Music, Steinway Hall, and Tony Pastor’s Music Hall—Lüchow’s German restaurant was the haunt of musicians, actors, and writers who came for the pigs knuckles, sauerbraten, bratwurst, roast goose, schnitzel, and Würzburger beer and stayed for the Gemütlichkeit. Notables who were seen at Lüchow’s included O. Henry, H. L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, Lillian Russell, John Barrymore, Enrico Caruso, Richard Strauss, and Victor Herbert, who for four years led the resident string ensemble in Viennese favorites. Even when the beer stopped flowing—Prohibition spelled the end for many establishments—Lüchow’s hung on. The day Prohibition was repealed, one thousand guests came to quaff seidels of Würzburger.