A talented pastry chef can whisk ingredients together quick enough to bend time and space, creating a black hole capable of sucking down pies, cakes, and British children eating pies filled with cake. Taste the sweetness of an "event horizon" with today's Groupon: $5 gets you $10 worth of sweets, café cuisine, and more at Lutz Café and Pastry Shop in Ravenswood.

Founded by Mr. and Mrs. Fred Lutz in 1948, Lutz Café was the first German pastry shop, or Konditorei, in Chicago. Using all-natural ingredients and traditional European recipes, Lutz serves strudels, cookies, candies, and cakes, like the chocolate-covered Baumkuchen cake ($32.95), which is baked in successive layers over several hours, showing faint rings that determine its age. Classic sugar-glazed cheese coffee cakes ($9.95) pamper tongues, while rich Belgium and Swiss truffles ($19 for a half-pound assorted box) melt in your mouth like chocolate ice cubes.

Lutz's café menu also offers comforting and hearty lunch options. Lightly butter your taste buds with individual-sized flaky ham and cheddar-filled quiches ($7.95) or try the mouth-melting spinach crepes finished with a hollandaise sauce ($8.95). Homemade, creamy tomato-bisque soup ($3.95) stands confidently on its own, or battles loneliness with the addition of a half-sandwich for an extra $5. If sitting and sipping, relax with an individual European pot of coffee served Viennese–style with whipped cream ($3.75) in a quaint, indoor café and pastry shop, or an enclosed warm-weather garden populated with domesticated wrought-iron tables and umbrellas.

Groupon not valid for online orders.

Reviews

Lutz Café and Pastry Shop was ranked on 10Best and received a three-star average from MenuPagers and four-star average from Yelpers:

• Old World manners and civility prevail…A little gem of a place. – tom, MenuPages
• A few cookies and a cup of tea presented to me in the loveliest teapot, tea cup on a silver tray. The girls here were very nice and service was on point. – Kara H., Yelp