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Who says you need to go to a restaurant to enjoy good food? With the recent crop of cookbooks by restaurateurs, you can make fabulous food at home. These offerings are from around the country.

Founded in 1898, The Berghoff Café serves German food in an Old World ambience in Chicago.

The cafe is now run by fourth-generation restaurateur and caterer Carlyn Berghoff. She offers 85 of the restaurant's recipes, plus variations, in "The Berghoff Café Cookbook: Berghoff Family Recipes for Simple Satisfying Food" (Andrews McMeel, $24.99).

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Some of the selections in the book, such as the cafe's salads and chili con carne, have been on the menu since at least 1914. Others weren't added until later; pizza, for instance, joined the lineup in 1998. Vita's oatmeal cookies are a favorite with customers.

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Brunch at Bubby's is a New York City tradition. A menu packed with crowd-pleasing favorites, like sour cream pancakes, blackberry corn muffins, huevos rancheros and pumpkin waffles with cinnamon pear compote, attracts a line of diners.

Chef/owner Ron Silver shares how to pull off the perfect brunch in "Bubby's Brunch Cookbook: Recipes and Menus From New York's Favorite Comfort Food Restaurant" (Ballantine Books, $30).

The nearly 200 recipes are organized so it's easy to mix and match favorites and tailor your menu: There's a chapter devoted to eggs, to baked goods, to pancakes and waffles and other griddle options, to sandwiches and salads, to drinks, to syrups and sauces and to meats.

The book is full of simple, traditional foods that are easy to make and may leave you nostalgic for simpler times.

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On Monday nights, Mark Peel offers a themed three-course dinner served family-style at Campanile in Los Angeles.

There's giant ravioli, mac and cheese, veal piccata, seven-hour leg of lamb, Southern fried chicken, corn-meal-crusted pan-fried trout, whole roast fish and more.

Peel has taken more than 200 recipes from his award-winning restaurant, tested them in his own kitchen -- without fancy equipment and a kitchen staff -- and presents them in "New Classic Family Dinners," by Peel with Martha Rose Shulman (Wiley, $34.95).

Peel's emphasis on technique and plenty of how-to pictures make all the recipes accessible to the home cook, including beef bourguignon, tuna noodle casserole and bacon-wrapped meatloaf with mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.

The crispy flattened chicken recipe, below, is a signature Campanile dish.