Dakota Inn Rathskeller

The Dakota Inn Rathskeller opened its doors on August 1, 1933, days before Prohibition’s final collapse, when German immigrant Karl Kurz converted a derelict Chinese laundry on John R near Six Mile into a tiny three-stool beer hall modeled on the rathskellers of his native Bavaria. He’d spent his days working at Ford’s Highland Park plant and his nights and weekends building the place by hand, betting correctly that the dry years were about to end.

For nearly 90 years, three generations of the Kurz family expanded that three-stool bar into the antique-crammed, stein-lined landmark it is today, complete with a piano that leads nightly sing-alongs of the Schnitzelbank, a classic German drinking song, and servers in dirndls and lederhosen. In 2025, longtime owner Karl E. Kurz — the founder’s grandson — sold the business to local developer Paddy Lynch, known for reviving other Detroit institutions like The Schvitz and Dutch Girl Donuts; Lynch has committed to keeping the historic main dining hall essentially untouched while modernizing elsewhere.

On our radar as Detroit’s only authentic German rathskeller and one of the very few Detroit restaurants whose founding story is genuinely inseparable from the end of Prohibition, not just adjacent to it.