Photos: Kandy Williams
Photos: Kandy Williams
When the now-famous Chicago Diner opened its doors 25 years ago, a restaurant critic wrote, “The deserts are so natural they taste like dirt. If you want something good, go to 7-11 for a ding dong.”
Mickey Hornick, co-founder of the popular vegetarian mainstay, laughs about it now. “That was the kind of stuff that was going on back then,” he said. “Now they write us up everywhere like we’re something special.”
Today, the Chicago Diner is nationally known in the vegetarian dining circuit. It’s ‘Radical Reuben’ sandwich is nominated for Vegetarian Times’ ‘best sandwich’ this year. Their vegan desserts are sold at major health food chains throughout the region and their classic chrome tables are usually full.
But being vegetarian trailblazers in Carl Sandburg’s “hog butcher for the world” hasn’t always been a cakewalk. They have overcome years of set backs, ridicule and just plain bad luck through years of hard work and perseverance, bolstered by a growing appreciation of all things green.
When Hornick and his partner, “Chef Jo” Kauchner, opened the restaurant in 1983, critics, loan officers and family members alike scoffed at the idea, some vehemently. “It’s like we were going against apple pie and mom and the whole thing,” Hornick recalled. “Big shot advertising guys came in and said you’re pissing against the wind.”
Their answer was to create an atmosphere as American as mini malls, decorating the place with vintage ads and neon lights and serving up heaping helpings of comfort food, but without the meat. “Instead of burgers, we have veggie burgers,” explains Kauchner, who, together with a long line of collaborators in the kitchen, created the Diner’s menu and authored The Chicago Diner Cookbook. “Instead of french fries we serve home fries,” she adds. They also offer vegan milkshakes, a Philly Cheese “Steak,” with homemade seitan in place of beef, biscuits & vegetarian gravy and “not” dogs for the kids.
The clever ploy has won them the loyalty of a diverse array of patrons, 65 percent of whom, Hornick says, are carnivores.
“There are typically two types of vegetarian restaurants,” says Hornick, “the hippie joint, with dead plants in the window, and these antiseptic places that feel like a hospital room, with white coats and everything. Instead of either of those options, we decided to just have fun and make food that tastes good.”
The restaurant fit’s the vegetarian mold about as little as it’s owners do. Hornick was lured into the vegetarian lifestyle — and into Kaucher’s life — while working at the Chicago Board of Options as a commodities trader. Although fairly successful, he says he felt unsatisfied. He began eating natural foods for health reasons, and soon became a regular at the Breadshop Kitchen, a local hippie haunt where Kaucher was slaving away baking bread.
“I just felt better eating there,” he explained. “I thought it was somewhat the wave of the future.”
One day he noticed a “dishwasher wanted” sign and was inspired. He quit his job at the Board and, despite warnings that the Breadshop could soon go under, he got to work.
“I came in as a dishwasher, and after two weeks I told the owner I thought I could save the place,” he said, adding that since his background was in finance, he saw it as a worthy challenge. And it worked, for a time. “When Mickey came in it was the first time the place made a profit,” Kaucher recalls, shaking her head, “and he didn’t even know what a cabbage was. I thought, ‘this guy is going to manage the restaurant?’”
Nevertheless, eventually Mickey left due to personality conflicts. The business went under shortly thereafter and Kaucher decided to leave Chicago for California. Although the two weren’t yet romantically involved, she says when she told him goodbye, he said, “Someday I’ll find you, wherever you are, and we’ll open a restaurant.”
A few years later she returned to Chicago, and he did.
They bought the Breadshop’s old storefront at 3411 N. Halsted in 1982 and got to work gutting the 100-year-old structure. But money soon became a problem.
“The banks laughed at me,” Hornick said. “We got investors and they wanted to pull out if I didn’t put hot dogs in.” A major tragedy in Hornick’s life offered salvation. After his mother passed away, which he says was a very hard time for him, his inheritance, along with some money loaned to them from prospective staffers, saved them from the hot dog pushers.
They enjoyed a measure of success from the beginning and developed a regular following, which was small but loyal, and included local actors John and Joan Cusak.
But they still weren’t getting the business they needed to stay afloat — partially because of the level of crime in that neighborhood back then, and partly because the idea of an all-vegetarian diet was still an anomaly in the “meat and potatoes” Midwest.
“One time we were closed on Saturday and Sunday for a holiday weekend, and we were robbed,” recalls Kaucher. “We had a walk-in out back. They broke into the walk in, and they stole all the food — the whole walk-in was completely bare — except for the tofu. I guess they didn’t know what to do with tofu,” she supposed.
Slowly, new businesses emerged and they began working together developing the neighborhood as a commercial center. Hornick became active organizing the Halsted Street Fair and other outdoor events to, according to him, “show the neighbors we weren’t weirdoes.”
And the neighbors returned the favor. The Diner sits in the heart of “Boystown,” a traditionally liberal area that hosted Chicago’s first Gay Pride Parade in 1970. It has since become the epicenter of Chicago’s thriving gay community.
The Diner also had its first booth at the Taste of Chicago in 1990. At first, they didn’t attract much attention, save the occasional heckler and chicken-wing flinger.
“They were throwing chicken wings at us,” Hornick reports, still astonished. “My manager at the time was so stressed, he got one of them in a choke hold!” Everyone made it out in one piece, though, save the chickens.
Nevertheless, Hornick’s finance and PR skills have weathered the rough patches and made an excellent complement to Chef Jo’s culinary insight. And business has never been better.
Around 1995, The Chicago Diner began selling vegan deserts to Whole Foods, which has since grown exponentially. The Diner’s treats are currently sold in 25 of their locations throughout the Midwest.
Public nods from Chicago luminaries have also bolstered the Diner’s success. Years back, Roger Ebert gave the restaurant a thumbs-up while on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and just last November, Chicago-born actor John C. Reilly listed the place on his “must list” in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“We get a lot of celebrities that come in here,” Kaucher says. “Madonna was here a number of years ago. [She] got a macrobiotic plate.” Other celebrity patrons have included Woody Harrelson, Kevin Bacon, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ellen Burstyn, Marilou Henner and Boy George, who Kaucher said excitedly “came in here one day to eat in a flannel shirt, blue jeans — and eye make up!”
The food has evolved through the years, under the tutelage of Oscar Gonzales, who was the Diner’s head chef for ten years. The dozens of staffers that have come in and out of its swinging kitchen doors over the years have also influenced it heavily.
Hornick reports that although the Diner, like every other restaurant, has taken a hit recently from rising food costs, sales have more than kept pace, increasing by 15 percent a year for five consecutive years now.
That level of success might help them if they ever decide to step back and hand over the reigns.
“What the future brings for us now?” Chef Jo contemplated. “Well, Mickey likes to work. But we’re like the pioneers of this veggie-type thing, so I feel like, where do we go from here?” While she has transitioned mostly to organizing special events and working on a new cookbook, Hornick doesn’t seem ready for retirement just yet.
And it isn’t the first thing they’ve disagreed on. “We’re very different,” Hornick chimed in. “We balance each other out, but at the expense of any peace between the two of us. We thought we’d get married when we got along better,” he adds, “ but we finally figured out that was never going to happen.” The two married just five years ago, after almost twenty years of courtship.
However, he concedes that he has met his goals. “I always told myself I wanted to be around for 25 years. I’ll be sixty in another year, and I’d love to do more traveling,” he says. But he doesn’t seem to want to stray too far from his hometown.
“I’m a Chicago boy, and I wanted to make my mark on Chicago.”
The Chicago Diner is located at 3411 N. Halsted St., Chicago. Visit them at veggiediner.com.
Jessica Pupovac is a Chicago-based freelance writer.