What better way to enjoy Chicago’s culinary history than to congregate at not only the city’s oldest restaurant (opened 1898), but also the oldest family-run restaurant in the United States.

Carlyn Berghoff, great-granddaughter of founder Herman Berghoff, dishes out a generous portion of Berghoff family history (along with some fresh-made coffee cake) and describes the Cafe dishes of old Chicago: beer braised pork loin, Lyonnaise potatoes, bacony green beans. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Carlyn talks about how she’s evolved some of the dishes, and give us tips on how we all can reuse, recycle and reinvent in our own kitchens—“tradition with a twist,” she says.

Ms. Berghoff is be joined by Culinary Historians member Nancy Ross Ryan, with whom she wrote the Cafe Cookbook, as well as the previously published Berghoff Family Cookbook.

Recorded Saturday, March 06, 2010 at Berghoff Café.