Just past 6:30 on a recent weekday morning, Mike DiStefano heard a familiar thud outside the back door of his Burbank restaurant, the Dugout.
“Can you excuse me?” he said, rising from one of a handful of tables in the tiny dining area. “I’ve got a bun guy coming in.”
DiStefano doesn’t usually entertain visitors at such an early hour. The Dugout, a fixture at the corner of 79th Street and Mobile Avenue since 1984, doesn’t open until 10:30.
That said, by the time the bun guy was pounding at the back door, DiStefano, 55, had been there well over an hour.
“I work six days a week, 5 (a.m.) to 1 (p.m.) — through lunch,” he said. “I come in, I make the red sauce, the natural gravies, the meatballs, I do a lot of cleaning, a lot of running around.
“Quite honestly, that’s what separates us from a lot of stands — we make all our own stuff.”
Another line of distinction came Aug. 30, when the Dugout was inducted into the Vienna Beef Hall of Fame. DiStefano celebrated by selling hot dogs for $1, and later confessed, “I got caught with my pants down. Every order was five dogs, 10 dogs. We ran out of buns twice. I had to keep sending people out for more.”
More Top Picks How To Build Self Esteem In A Child With Dyslexia Or Adhd
Vienna chooses its Hall of Famers based on several criteria, including contributions to the community, length of time representing Vienna products and customer satisfaction. Proof of the last of those criteria might be a little math problem DiStefano recently sussed out.
“I figured it out the other day,” he said. “Don’t hold me to the wall on this, but in 33 years I bet we’ve sold a million and a half hot dogs — which is a hell of a lot of hot dogs.”
And a hell of a long way from what was an empty lot across from a ball field at Harry E. Fry School and two blocks south of Reavis High School.
In ’84, DiStefano’s promising hockey career — he was a junior league teammate of Blackhawks great Chris Chelios — was halted by a shattered cheekbone, and the 20-year-old was looking to get into the restaurant business. He remembered the vacant lot two blocks from his parents’ home at 77th & Mobile, pulled the weeds back from a rusted “For Sale” sign on the property and called the owner.
With a partner in childhood friend Dan Thielmann, DiStefano bought the property and built the modest brick rectangle that is still home to the Dugout — thanks in no small part to DiStefano’s father, Nick.
“The truth of it is, Dan and I, we were young and dumb,” DiStefano said. “What did we have to lose? We were already broke.”
They borrowed $10,000 from Nick, along with the recipes the elder DiStefano had crafted over a lifetime in the food service industry.
“We paid him back the first year,” DiStefano said. “We had lines out the door every day.”
They also had Nick, who retired from his job as a dietitian in the University of Illinois Hospital System to work at the Dugout.
“He was a great cook,” DiStefano said. “And he was so fun. All the customers loved him. He’d talk with them at the tables, make them laugh.”
After five years, Thielmann, busy raising a family and working another full-time job, sold his interest in the business to DiStefano. Nick passed away at age 89 in 2003.
But, Thielmann’s sister-in-law, Dawn Schmitz, who started as a 15-year-old when the place opened, never left. Now she’s the manager.
“She’s just a wonderful person,” DiStefano said. “She’s like a sister to me.”
Together, they move a lot of beef sandwiches, breaded steak sandwiches and hot dogs, as well as the spaghetti and mostaccioli Nick insisted on. At $7.55 with sausage or meatballs, the pastas are the most expensive items on the menu.
“I thought, ‘Who’s going to buy that at a fast food place?'” DiStefano said. “We sell a ton of it. Just another case proving I should listen to my elders.”
Lately, though, the best seller has been a relatively new item, the Sicilian chicken sandwich.
“That’s what we call it — we just made it up,” DiStefano said. “It’s a grilled chicken breast on garlic bread with garlic dressing, lettuce, tomato and melted mozzarella.
“We sell more of that than anything now.”
Even more than the Dugout’s famous pepper and egg sandwich, which made it more than once onto legendary Chicago dining journalist Pat Bruno’s annual list of the Lenten favorite — though at the Dugout it’s not a seasonal delicacy.
“It’s a staple,” DiStefano said. “We sell it all year ’round, seven days a week.”
At just one location. DiStefano has never been tempted to open another shop.
“Years ago, I had a guy tell me he’d opened a couple of florist shops, but he couldn’t stay on top of everything,” DiStefano said. “He told me, and it stuck, ‘Why have three mediocre places when you can have one great one?’
“I can’t duplicate myself.”
Perhaps not, though occasionally DiStefano’s 11-year-old son, Michael, will make him do a double-take.
“He helps out around here,” DiStefano said. “He’s hilarious. He’ll take orders out to the tables — the little (so-and-so) is getting tips! Then I’ll see him standing there just like my dad used to stand.
“He’s like my dad coming back to me.”
More Top Picks Best Acoustic Guitar Pickup Systems
Phil Arvia is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
The Dugout
Where: 6300 W. 79th St., Burbank
Menu: Sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, wraps, pasta
Hours: Monday-Saturday 10:30 a.m. – 10 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Contact: 708-599-7333
Etc.: Orders can be faxed to 708-598-4583