Milano: Fat Tuesday Customers Love This Joliet Bakery's Paczki

JOLIET, IL — When it comes to Fat Tuesday, people in the Joliet area know they can visit their area grocery stores including Jewel to buy a cardboard box filled with Paczki at a fair price — or they can spend a little extra and feast on a higher quality dessert by heading elsewhere.

And for people who follow Brian Bessler's Joliet Area Bar & Restaurant Guide, there's one Joliet bakery that, time and time again, gains positive referrals for its terrific-tasting homemade Paczki. That bakery has been part of Joliet since 1915 —Milano Bakery, 433 South Chicago St.

Located on the main gateway into downtown Joliet, Milano Bakery has been in business for 108 years and counting. For Fat Tuesday, just like all weekdays, Milano's will be open from 5:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Milano's is also open 6 a.m. to noon on Saturday. It's closed Sundays.

Milano kept baking fresh loaves of bread and sweets during World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam and other international crisis.

In preparation for Fat Tuesday, Joliet Patch visited Milano last Friday to interview co-owner Darin DeBenedetti and speak with customers who kept coming inside the bakery's small lobby area to purchase their boxes of Paczki to devour ahead of Fat Tuesday.

Milano typically sells 5,000 to 6,000 Paczki in the lead up and including Fat Tuesday.

"It's changed over the years," DeBenedetti remarked. "It's now spread out about three weeks."

Milano's Bakery is open on Fat Tuesday for its normal weekday hours: 5:30 a.m. until 1 p.m.

On Fat Tuesday, "we go through maybe 2,000 of the traditional and 1,500 to 2,000 of the other ones, the gourmet. Our gourmet, it's more of a dessert," DeBeneditti said.

Joliet Patch asked its owner if Milano has the absolute best Paczki in the entire Joliet area.

DeBeneditti declines to answer the question, but remarks, "people tell me that."

As for the lead-up in sales toward Fat Tuesday, the co-owner of Milano had this to say:

"It's been great. Everybody seems to be happy," he said.

Milano has come a long ways since one of its bakers from Chicago introduced Paczki to the Joliet bakery, nearly 30 years ago, according to DeBeneditti.

Around 1994, the Chicago baker urged DeBeneditti to order a bunch of Paczki, assuring him they would be amazingly popular here in Joliet.

"I sold about a dozen and a half," DeBeneditti recalled, telling Joliet Patch's editor he remembers giving away the remaining supply of homemade desserts to people on Joliet's sidewalks.

Nowadays, DeBeneditti doesn't have to beg people to sample his Paczki.

In the lead up to Ash Wednesda0y, people visit Joliet's Milano bakery by the droves.

That should be the case on Fat Tuesday, if recent sales history holds true, as it should.