Bargains and Brothels: Klas, Cicero

Bargains and Brothels: Klas, Cicero

ReneG, Amata, El Panzone and others have extolled the grooviness of Klas, an old world Bohemian joint in Cicero. Tonight, a few friends and I had dinner and a tour.

Dinner was about 10 bucks each, and included soup, salad, entrée and dessert. The soup for me was liver dumpling: a little salty but pretty good. The salad was two kinds of cole slaw and sweet/sour cabbage, a very good foil for the entrée, which was boiled beef with dill sauce, a little sweeter than I had expected but tasty. Dessert was apple strudel, also good. Now, none of this food was outstanding, but it was flavorful, solid Bohemian fare, and the price cannot be beat. We had dinner early (around 6:00) and as the sun set, the stained glass windows set ablaze the room, of which my friends and I seemed to be the youngest members by about 10 years (that’s a problem: when the old crowd stops coming, what’s going to happen to this place?).

After dinner, we started wandering around and visited:

• The Dr. Zhivago Room, which is a wood paneled banquet hall, with thick ceiling beams, chandeliers and a series of hand-painted murals depicting scenes from Russian History. It was deeply cool, and our host told us it could be had for a buck a head (i.e., bring 25 people and there’s a $25 clean-up fee tacked on to the bill; I’m sure it’s negotiable).

• The Waterfall Room, which was really my favorite and had a kind of faux hunting lodge feel. In the corner was a water fall that cascaded down a mountain of tiled steps; there was also a big fire place, and lots of stuffed animal life. It had its own bar and lots and lots of wood. It was cozy, in an Eastern European kind of way.

• The George Washington Room (!) which was a huge, off-white banquet hall with private bar overlooking the beer garden, and huge murals of GW at Valley Forge and other locations. This place, despite bizarre murals, was a little too pedestrian…I preferred the funkier chambers like The Waterfall Room and …

• The Last Supper Room, a long chamber with gold and red stencil work along ceilings and walls and a series of five or so church-type doors leading off to tiny little rooms which, allegedly, provided locations for illicit (though by the standards of 1930’s Cicero, quite typical) liaisons. Most of the rooms now seem to hold chairs and other licit items, but there’s one room in back that still has a chaise longue and some furniture to suggest the good old days of generally tolerated prostitution in Cicero (an era that ended sometime in the last 10 years).

These rooms are all in addition to the two main dining rooms and relatively tiny dark wood bar, which tonight featured a guy totally knocked out and hunched over a glass of red wine. The host told us the guy comes every night and does rounds of red (Cabernet, Merlot, Chianti) until he blacks out…then he starts again.

Klas is a fun place to go eat. The food is good and the ambiance is fabulous, very much a throwback in the tradition of the late, great Horwath’s. I’d stop by sooner rather than later, as it may be later than you think.

Klas Restaurant
5734 W Cermak Rd
Cicero IL
708-652-0795
Tue-Thu 11-830, Fri 11-9, Sat 11-930, Sun 11-8

Restaurant.com has Klas coupons, $3.00 for a $10 certificate, "Valid with a minimum purchase of $20. Food only. Not valid on Saturday or Sunday." And, as is so often the case, you can actually get it for $1.50 if you enter the sale code, which is currently 14401 (though April 8th) at check-out.

Keep Klas Alive!

The family and I had a very nice meal there the other night, we did not get quite the tour Hammond got, but we did peak into a few rooms while enjoying eating in the garden.

Is Klas grand food? Hardly (and not quite as good as Operetta), but a grand deal? Fer sure! Our family of four, with a beer for Dad, clocked in at a few dollars over $30 (and of course we got plenty of leftovers). The kidz deals were especially amazin' 'cause they're 1/2 price. Still, the kidz, like the adults, get soup, salad bar, house-made rye, two sides (including a mass amount of dumplings) AND dessert AND coffe (hot Colombian!).

The stuff: the choice of soups was liver dumpling, beef noodle or mushroom. None was exquisite, the liver dumplings a bit heavier than I like, but the ample droplets of fat hugging the surface of the soup demonstrated the flavor within. The salad bar would seem to be a throwaway, but in addition to plain ol' lettuce, there was a few Czech versions of cole slaw. I will say that despite the fact that these three salads looked different, they all tasted about the same. Of the mains, mMy meatloaf was that kinda ultra-dense, near gummy, stuff also sold in German deli's. I liked it but it is not one of those things I'd race to order again; the neatest thing ordered was fruit dumplings for daughter number 2, the Carbo Princess. Big, doughy, knish like dumplings filled with stawberries and served with a side of very real mashed potatoes. Eating was not this good since our Saturday at south side ice cream parlors. Those mashed potatoes, however, were only second best to the potato dumplings with shrivels of golden fried onions. The bread dumplings were nicely plain.

We each sampled a dessert, chocolate pudding, rice pudding, jello and house-made kolachy, and each of us was happy with our choice, although I think Dad was smartest with the kolachy.

See above for the interesting decor.

A blast from the LTH and Cicero past: Klas.

After calling around to every restaurant in the four gangster-town area Friday to see who had seating in front of a TV with the presidential debate on (and receiving answers ranging from "we don't have a TV anymore," to "sorry, Cubs and Sox on tonight," to "the staff is watching it in the back if you want to come hang out in the kitchen"), we settled on Klas ("yeah, it'll be on in the bar, but don't throw anything.")

I had not been to the soot- and kitsch-coated Klas bar since the smoking ban, and must say, something has been lost. And I'm not just talking about customers - they left in about '83. This is a place that has been running since 1922 and probably had the mortgage and equipment paid off before the Depression, and has functioned on all of my visits over the past ten years as a family hangout:

Us: "how late do you serve dinner?"

Girl behind bar: "I don't know. [turns] MOM? HOW LATE IS THE KITCHEN OPEN?"

Mom: "zey can eat venever. Pop's not going anyver tonight."

Uncle at the bar: <snoring loudly>

I love Klas. Within 3 minutes we had baskets of rye bread, bottomless RC Cola, draft lager, beef noodle soup, and the best sweet and sour cabbage on Cermak, and ten minutes later three gigantic platters of food.

The best was the pork medallions wrapped in bacon and suspended on an unbudging mushroom-bacon gravy, perfectly smoky. Second prize went to the whole chicken with stuffing (dry but flavorful, worked well with the lemon slices and large gravy boat), and third to my deep-fried garlic pork meatloaf (Budweis Cutlet), which I always forget I don't like, but at least it's consistent. Bread dumplings and kolacky (apricot, cheese and raisin, poppyseed) were probably still the best elements of the meal.

So good company and food, and I'm ever so glad they're still kicking. But with zero patrons (other than us) on a Friday night from 7 until after 10, this is one GNR I hope gets more patronage. Though perhaps they'll roll out some amnesty for pipe smoking in that most excellent bar if it ceases to be a public restaurant. And then we can conduct a forensic archaeological excavation for Hoffa in the back room.

Santander wrote:So good company and food, and I'm ever so glad they're still kicking. But with zero patrons (other than us) on a Friday night from 7 until after 10, this is one GNR I hope gets more patronage.

Santander, do you mean there were no other patrons in the bar, or in the entire restaurant?

Alas, the entire restaurant. I made a walkthrough to admire my favorite rooms. There was one other bar patron who eventually joined us in addition to the Klas family.

I've always enjoyed the decor and good-deal pricing for their tasty entrees. Grandma's roast pork and wienerschnitzel are my favorite, usually-reliable standby picks. It's too bad the place doesn't get more business; I would hate to see it fold, most of the old standard Czech places are already kaput.
.

Klas is an excellent old school bohemian restaurant. They have many local meetings and stuff in those rooms.

There is another one: "Westchester Inn" in Westchester (of course) on the corner of 31st and Wolf, in the strip mall with the Dominick's and Scott's pet shop in it, just a few miles west of Brookfield Zoo. When we visit the zoo, we always make it a point to stop in there. Very tiny place, but good reasonably priced typical bohemian fare: Svickova, fruit dumplings, breaded pork tenderloin, roast duck, pork roast, liver dumpling soup, dumplings of course... yum.

What a place, and the food here is rich, starchy, and filling. I am not sure why this place does not get more LTH love. Although it was not on my list of places to go until it was recommended(as I have said before sometimes that GNR list is overwhelming to look at and places may slip past my eye.) Nonetheless, Klas has a spot near the top of all the GNR's I have been to(I have been to 19 now).

A very neat place, old world, and a neighborhood fixture. Friendly staff, and as I mentioned very good food.

We ordered the Pilsner beef goulash, the half roasted chicken, and the meatloaf(I went of the goulash.

With the goulash I got a bowl of the beef noodle soup(my daughter loves any noodle, mashed potatoes, and the bread dumplings. My wife ordered the goulash as her soup choice for her meatloaf, potato dumplings, and veg., and our dining companion got the salad, mashed, and veg with the roasted chicken(which I did not try).

The goulash... the beef was fork tender, and the broth was rich, and flavorfull. YOu also gotta love a place that brings out a pitcher of gravy for the dumplings, and mashed potatoes. The gravy was very good, a pork gravy with specks of carrots in it. Excellent, The bread dumplings were very good as well, good for sopping up the goulash broth, and as a vessel for the extra gravy. I tried my wifes potato dumpligns topped with onions, and I think I preferred them to the bread dumplings. But both were good. I was definitely ready for a nap after dinner, but had to have some apple struedel, and my dining companions had the kolacky. The apple struedel was better than the kolacky, but all were good. Full of beer, and food we made the 1.5 hour trek home due to some heavy traffic. Photos of the food posted on my blog.

We will be back.

some pictures from my visit a few weeks ago(these long holiday weekends have helped me catch up with my pictures).

beef goulash w/ bread dumplings:



meatloaf w/ potato dumplings:

Next time you go, try the liver dumpling soup. That was some soup, and I never would touch liver before. If I was on death row, this would be the soup I'd order for my last meal.

Pie Lady wrote:Next time you go, try the liver dumpling soup. That was some soup, and I never would touch liver before. If I was on death row, this would be the soup I'd order for my last meal.

The liver dumpling soup at Laschet's is also excellent. It is not always available, call first.

Pie Lady wrote:Next time you go, try the liver dumpling soup. That was some soup, and I never would touch liver before. If I was on death row, this would be the soup I'd order for my last meal.

thanks for the rec, however I am not a big fan of liver, or other organs. Maybe I will try to convince someone at my table to order it on my next visit so I can at least have a taste.