Beverly Bakery Makes Traditional South Side Paczki for Fat Tuesday

CHICAGO — Everyone has their own favorite neighborhood place to get paczki, and in the 19th Ward that place is Beverly Bakery and Cafe, 10528 S Western Ave. Chicago.

While the rest of us sleep, the Quigley family will be busy mixing, scaling, frying, cutting and filling paczki in anticipation of Fat Tuesday, which this year falls on Feb. 21.

The secret to good paczki (pronounced "ponchky" is the dough, with just a squirt of filling otherwise it's just a donut. The paczki tradition dates back to the Middle Ages, when Poles made paczki to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house before fasting during the Lenten season. "Paczki Day" has since been embraced and celebrated in the heavily Polish-American Midwest on "Fat Tuesday," the last big blowout before Ash Wednesday.

Beverly Bakery is offering 11 delicious flavors of middle, including apricot, blueberry, custard w/powdered sugar, custard w/ chocolate glaze, lemon buttercream, vanilla buttercream, chocolate buttercream, raspberry, strawberry danish filling w/ glaze, pineapple, prune and fresh strawberry.

The bakery is also taking orders for King Cakes, which are $20. The baby will inserted into the cake after its finished baking. (Please allow two days in advance.)

“Whoever finds that baby has to buy the King Cake next year,” Quigley said.

To save time in line on Tuesday, you can preorder paczki online., or call 773-238-5580. Paczki are $2.99 each, or $32 for a dozen. Fresh strawberry paczki are $3.25 ($20 for a half-dozen).

The Quigleys are expecting a big crowd throughout the weekend leading up to Fat Tuesday. Beverly Bakery will be open from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, but if you show up earlier, someone will be there.

“We’re taking Wednesday off,” Jean Marie said. “We’re trying not to be self-abusive.”