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Barbara Ann's Bar-B-Que: Barbara Ann Bracy
Lem's Bar-B-Q: James Lemons
Fat Johnnie's: John Pawlikowski
Edna's Restaurant: Edna Stewart
Izola's Family Dining: Izola White
Rose DeShazer White: Home Cook
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Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans.
Fat Johnnie’s
7242 S. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL 60636
(773) 737-6294
[When I was in eighth grade, a guy] sold a tamale on a bun off a push-chart and put it on a bun and called it a Mother-in-Law, and he charged a nickel for that with ketchup on it. [He] was a Lithuanian American. His name was Pete, if I remember right, but that’s going back fifty years, so I don’t know for sure. And that’s where I got the idea of the Mother-in-Law. – John Pawlikowski
When you’re in Chicago, you’ve got to make a stop for a hot dog. Or a Mother-in-Law. Chicago native John Pawlikowski has been serving both from his stand on Western Avenue since 1972. John grew up eating hot dogs from pushcarts in his neighborhood. As a teenager, he was first introduced the Mother-in-Law: a tamale in a bun, topped with chili, onions, sport peppers, tomato and a pickle. When John and his brother opened Fat Johnnie’s, Mother-in-Laws went on the menu. The centerpiece of this crazy concoction is, of course, the tamale. Tamales are ubiquitous in the Mississippi Delta, so it has long been thought that Delta tamales traveled to Chicago during the Great Migration and ended up in hot dog buns. But the story isn’t that simple. John is Polish-American, the vendor he bought from as a kid was Lithuanian, and the tamale factory that supplied tamales to both is owned by Greeks. So, while there are certainly Delta-style hot tamales to be found in the Windy City, Fat Johnnie’s works with a completely different style. Still, the story of Chicago red hots (hot dogs) maintain a curious tie to Delta red hots (tamales), if only in nickname alone.
Visit the Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Trail for more on Delta tamales.
NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: John Pawlikowski
DATE: March 25, 2008
LOCATION: Fat Johnnie’s
INTERVIEWER & PHOTOGRAPHER: Amy Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Tuesday, March 25th in Chicago, Illinois, on South Western Avenue at Fat Johnnie’s, and I’m here with John Pawlikowski. And you’re Fat Johnnie himself, yeah?
John Pawlikowski: Hi, how are you? My name is John Pawlikowski, and I’m the original owner of Fat Johnnie’s at 7242 Western. I built the place May 12, 1972. I don’t know what else Amy wants me to say. [Laughs]
What is your birth date, sir, if I may ask?
August 2, 1948.
Are you a native of Chicago?
Yes, I was born and raised right in Marquette Park.
And where did your family originate, and how did they get to Chicago?
Right here, 7240 Western. This is my grandma’s house right next door to me [and my business]. She had a garden center for forty-eight years. That’s how I was raised.
So is your grandmother a first-generation Polish American in Chicago?
Yes. Yes, my dad was born here. He was two years old and he was taken to Zakopane [Poland], and he came back here when he was eighteen—from Poland. So my dad is originally right from Poland.
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Okay, so tell me about this neighborhood, first of all, where we are.
It was 1965—’66—’64 I went to grammar school at St. Adrian’s. It was an all-white neighborhood, and then they started changing it around 1968, ’69, and then on the ‘70s—late ‘70s—‘80s it changed, and now it’s an ethnic neighborhood. Everybody lives here. [Laughs]
So before we started recording, you mentioned that you were in the eighth grade that you—there was a guy that sold tamales and that’s where you were first introduced to the Mother-in-Law [sandwich]. Could you talk about that?
He sold a tamale on a bun in—off a push-chart and put it on a bun and called it a Mother-in-Law, and he charged a nickel for that with ketchup on it. And that’s where I got the idea of the Mother-in-Law.
And you said he was Lithuanian?
Yes, he was a Lithuanian American, yes. His name was Pete, if I remember right, but that’s going back fifty years, so I don’t know for sure. [Laughs]
Right. So were the tamales about the same? Because we were talking, too, about the places that manufacture tamales, and they’ve been around for some good fifty, sixty, seventy years.
They’ve been around forever. And Tom Tom Tamales still is the same as it was. I’ve been in business for thirty-six years—two years on a street with a pushcart—and there’s still—thirty-eight years [later], they still make them the same.
So the tamales that Pete was selling, do you think that they were Tom Tom’s?
Yes, they were. Yes. You remember the wrapper? The wrapper has got a little girl on it, and years ago the little girl was dropping her skirt, lifting her skirt and just recently—just changed that about twelve years ago. They said it’s not right; now the girl wears her skirt down. [Laughs]
Goodness. So and Tom Tom Tamales, just to put this on the record, is owned by a Greek family, and they’ve been around since about the [nineteen] ‘30s?
Yes, they’ve been around a long time. I don’t really know all the family members. The ones that—or I knew in my younger years of dealing with them, they passed away already. But now it’s through the family—the tradition. There’s a nephew there running the place now, I think.
So any idea why Pete called this tamale on a bun a Mother-in-Law?
No idea. It’s just something and then I added to it, and now I got a Father-in-Law with a tamale; I put chili on the tamale with cheese. And the Mother-in-Lawis with chili. Because when I first had the Mother-in-Law, everybody was complaining that, “You’re prejudiced. Where’s the Father-in-Law?” So then I put cheese on a tamale with chili and made it a Father-in-Law.
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And I understand too you have the Mighty Polish, which is a lot more than a Mother-in-Law.
Yes, it’s a tamale with a Polish sausage—a tamale sliced in half with a Polish inside with chili, cheese and everything on top. People like that, too. The Mighty Dog is the same way; it’s a hot dog and a tamale.
So if I could back up a little bit and ask how you came to be in the hot dog—and Mother-in-Law—business.
Well that’s a long story. [Laughs] I worked at Nabisco in 1968, ’69, ’70, and the truckers went on strike, and our company went on strike. And a Lithuanian man sold me a pushcart for $100 and said, “You could sell hot dogs on the street corner.” So in 1970 I started selling hot dogs at 69th and South Damon, and I did that for a couple years, and I told my brother, “We should open a hot dog stand.” Because my brother Frank and I opened this original Fat Johnnie’s in May 12th of [nineteen] ’72 and he was—oh, he’s my—he was my very big brother; he was eleven years older than I was, and we always connived together—made a scam to make money—so we opened Fat Johnnie’s. It’s just a small trailer, and we did it by city code at that time, and here I am, thirty-six years later, still selling hot dogs.
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The building itself, describe it to me.
It was a trailer, and it’s on a foundation with city plumbing and city water and city electricity, but it actually was a trailer, but it was all built by city code.
And it’s pretty darned small.
It’s very small.
It’s about ten by fifteen feet or something?
It’s very small; it’s a hot dog stand. We don’t even sell French fries.
Oh, really?
Yes. It’s just a hot dog stand just like you see a man on the corner selling them out of a pushcart. Before you were born, they used to be on every corner and this is how we copied them and from that time on we did it that way.
Well now fries are pretty—that’s pretty much standard that you get fries with a hot dog or a sandwich of any kind [here in Chicago].
The original hot dog stands that came up in the [nineteen] ‘60s, ’70s they had hot dog and the put the fries right on the hot dog and wrapped it with it, and that’s the way it was. But pushcarts never have French fries, so we built it on the version of a pushcart. And then American Greek came along, and he started putting French fries in a bag. If you go to Gene and Jude’s on River Road, they still take the original hot dog with the fries right on top of the hot dog, and that’s all you get and that’s the real deal. That’s how it was—how fries were introduced with the hot dog back in the day when I was young. Now I feel real bad; Amy is hot and young, and I’m old. [Laughs]
Can you describe for me that original cart that you had—what it looked like?
It was just a pushcart as big as this picnic tabletop, with wheels on it and a steam table with a portable heater underneath and a glass top that I used to make hot dogs. It was thirty-cents [for a hot dog] and sell them one at a time on a corner. We had a lantern—a Coleman lantern on the front. When it got dark at night, you’d light the lantern with your light, and it was just a little cart.
So how did you make a name for yourself in the hot dog business?
The product spoke—made the name—we just continued to be consistent on what we served and over the thirty-six years, it made its own name. We’ve been in National Geographic, been numerous articles in papers about us—everything. I make a damn good hot dog. That’s all I can say. [Laughs]
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So the Mother-in-Law, then, has been on your menu since the beginning?
Since the beginning—Tom Tom Tamale on a bun.
And relative to the regular hot dog, how popular is the Mother-in-Lawor the variations of the Mother-in-Law?
The Mother-in-Law is thirty-percent of the business. The hot dogs and Polish aren’t—the tamales, thirty-percent of the business.
What is your customer base here?
It’s 100-percent mixed. Everybody, yeah. Afro-Americans, Greeks, Mexicans, anything you can think of, they come to Fat Johnnie’s. [Laughs]
And I was telling you, too, before we started recording about Mississippi Delta tamales and how different they are and that I had one here on Sunday, but it was about ten-times the size of a Mississippi Delta tamale. Have you seen those kinds of Mississippi-style tamales here?
No. Never did see a—I never knew they sold tamales in Mississippi. I thought, originally, they come from Mexico. And I’m very surprised that you’re telling me it’s big as a cucumber. I never seen a tamale that big.
Yeah, well the one here it was at J’s Meat Market, which is pretty new, I think, and I couldn’t really tell you where it is, but I think it’s on the West Side.
Huh. Yeah, I go around 59th and Kedzie [Avenue], and it’s all Spanish through there, and there’s a couple of places. Pete’s Grocery. And they have the old corn-rolled tamales with corn wrapping on it but Tom Tom is the only one—I use the rolled tamale. And Veteran Tamale is similar, but they’ve got bunched tamales. There’s two pieces in a package.
So when you first started out, how much was the Mother-in-Law and how much is it now?
I think we sold it for twenty-cents and now it’s $2.00.
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So there’s so many hot dog vendors here in Chicago and people that have red hots and Mother-in-Laws and things, what makes yours—you said that you have a quality product and it’s consistent and all that, but do you think there’s something else that makes people want to come to you?
No, the quality product brings them back. If you go somewhere and eat something and you don’t like it, you don’t go back. And over there, it’s people like us. They tell us all the time—there’s all kinds of hot dog stands in Chicago; they’re all over. And everyone that does it makes a living at it. And it’s the consistency; I believe it’s the consistency.
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Can you describe your Chicago hot dog?
It’s a hot dog on a poppy seed bun with mustard, relish, onion, tomato and cucumber. And then there’s another twist to it: we make it with chili and cheese or cheese or just chili, and that’s about all.
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And you have a tamale in a cup, too, is that right?
Yes, that’s a Tamale Sundae. We give that with just chili, or you can get that with chili and cheese and onions, tomato, and hot pepper on that and that’s that.
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And so the red hots here in Chicago, that’s a hot dog.
Yes, the original name for a hot dog way back in the day was called a red hot and—and now you don’t see that much; but I still have the name red hot, and young generations think it’s something hot. But, originally, back in the day, a red hot was considered a hot dog—back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Because in the [Mississippi] Delta, the tamales are known as red hots a lot of times.
Really?...Wow, that’s something. It is very weird. [Laughs]
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Do you think that the future of Fat Johnnie’s—that [your son, Ted] will carry it on?
I don’t know; I don’t know. I can't answer that. I wish he could, but I don’t know if he can or not because I don’t want him to have a life like I had. It’s too dedicating; you got to be there all the time.
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So what do you have to say or what do you think about the long history of hot dogs in Chicago?
It’s a great thing. It was brought back in the—in the Depression time and it’s still going. Everybody loves hot dogs—apple pie, Chevrolet, and hot dogs. [Laughs]
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
