The First Stop: Lou Mitchell's and a Century of Breakfast

Some restaurants serve a neighborhood. Lou Mitchell's served the whole country, one traveler at a time for the better part of a century. It's the rare Chicago institution that's both a beloved local breakfast spot and a genuine piece of American highway history.

Who Started It, and Why

In 1923, a man named William Mitchell opened a small diner at 565 W. Jackson Boulevard, right in the heart of what's now the West Loop. He named it after his son, Lou, who worked alongside the rest of the family to keep the place running. There was no grand concept behind it, just a family restaurant built to feed a neighborhood that was rapidly becoming Chicago's transportation hub.

That location wasn't an accident. Lou Mitchell's sat just steps from Union Station, already one of the busiest rail terminals in the country. From day one, the restaurant was feeding people who were either arriving in Chicago or about to leave it.

When It Became "The First Stop"

In 1926, three years after the diner opened, U.S. Route 66 was officially designated, and its eastern starting point ran essentially right past Lou Mitchell's front door. Almost overnight, the restaurant became the traditional last real meal before travelers pointed their cars west on the 2,400 mile drive toward California. That earned it a nickname that's stuck ever since: the first stop on the Mother Road.

The restaurant's popularity outgrew its original space, and in 1949 the Mitchell family built a new location directly across the street, the same building that still houses the restaurant today. Walk in now and you'll find largely the same black and white terrazzo floors, the same counters, and the same golden-age Route 66 look it had when it opened, all of which helped earn the building a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

Famous Food Brings Famous Patrons

This is where Lou Mitchell's stops being just a great diner and starts being a genuine piece of political and cultural history. For decades, it's functioned as an unofficial whistle stop for anyone campaigning through Chicago. Presidents Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush have both eaten there. So have Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is a longtime regular, reportedly ordering the same thing every visit, two eggs over easy, no potatoes, tomatoes and chicken sausage on the side.

Beyond presidents and senators, the restaurant's counters have hosted governors, mayors, athletes, and actors passing through Chicago, all sitting shoulder to shoulder with regulars and out of town travelers at the same worn Formica counter. It's one of the few places in the city where a sitting U.S. senator and someone catching a train at Union Station might end up eating breakfast three stools apart.

The staff has its own piece of history too. Longtime waitress Donna Fenton worked the floor at Lou Mitchell's for decades, celebrating her 95th birthday the same year the restaurant marked its 100th anniversary in 2023. She kept working into her late eighties, four days a week.

A Few Little-Known Facts

• Older than Route 66 itself. Lou Mitchell's was already open and operating for three years before Route 66 existed as a designated highway. The restaurant didn't chase the Mother Road's fame, the road grew up around a business that was already there.
• The free Milk Duds tradition is older than most people think. According to family history, "Uncle Lou" started handing out small boxes of Milk Duds to women and children as a gesture of hospitality sometime in the 1930s. Other accounts point to 1958 as the year the practice became a fixture. Either way, it ran for generations until the pandemic disrupted Hershey's production of the small boxed size, which is when warm donut holes stepped in as the new line-side tradition for everyone.
• Every meal comes with a built-in dessert. Lou Mitchell's is possibly the only diner in the country that serves a small scoop of vanilla ice cream after breakfast, a palate cleanser tradition that has nothing to do with pancakes or eggs and everything to do with the restaurant's old-school hospitality streak.
• The eggs are a deliberate signature. The restaurant is known for cooking with double yolk eggs, a small detail that regulars notice immediately and newcomers usually don't expect from a diner menu.
• The menu has its own sense of humor. Beyond the "world's fluffiest pancake," Lou Mitchell's serves a "Mitchell Mouse" pancake plate built for kids, complete with blueberry eyes, a Milk Dud nose, and a whipped cream smile.
• It was a favorite breakfast spot of our Bronzecomm Newsletter founder, Raynard Hall, who held many a breakfast meeting there.

Still Standing, Still Full

A century after William Mitchell opened his doors, Lou Mitchell's is still doing the same job it always did, feeding people who are either heading into Chicago or heading out of it, and doing it well enough that a sitting president and a stranger off the train end up eating the same jumbo omelet at the same counter. That kind of staying power isn't an accident, it's what happens when a family business gets the basics right for a hundred years straight.