That scene in Goodfella's where Ray Liotta as Henry Hill walks through the restaurant and introduces the audience to his crew...Horwath's was that kind of restaurant in Chicago. You'd walk in and you just knew everybody in the place. It was good guys and bad guys. Everyone from the local parish priest, the local politicians, and the neigborhood wiseguys went to dinner there.

If you needed a favor, a political hook-up, had to reach out to somebody, get a message to somebody (before cell phones connected us all at the hip), you'd go to Horwath's where you were sure to see someone who could make a connection for you.

Horwath's was the restaurant where Chuckie English, Sam Giancana's driver and confidant, was gunned down in the parking lot.

It was also used in an episode of "The West Wing." It was the story line in which press secretary C.J. Cregg, Allison Janney's character, returned to Ohio for a high school class reunion. There's a scene in which she's sitting in a car in a parking lot in what is supposed to be her hometown of Dayton and you can clearly see the Horwath's lighted sign through the windshield.

The building was demolished a few years ago. A Staples office supply store now stands on the property.

tony b.