Saturday night we stopped at the newly re-located and re-opened Robinson’s #1 Ribs. And on this grand opening day it was a party. Happy, enthusiastic, busy and delicious.
We were greeted, my daughter Mariah and myself, by Charlie Robinson himself. We exchanged our usual greeting. “You getting a lot of time off?” he asks me. “Not much. You?” And then we laugh. Two overworked entrepreneurs who have known each other for 35 years.
Charlie is clearly proud of the wholesale remaking he and his family have pulled off at the decrepit former home of Leona’s. Talk about a restaurant that was hot until it wasn’t.
The move from the 900 block of Madison Street to the new spot at 848 Madison is just a block. But what an upgrade. Spacious, well-turned, and inevitably filled with all the newspaper clippings and awards that Charlie and Helen Robinson have earned in a life’s work. The bar area — can you call it a bar? Well it’s a bar with food and gigantic flat screens — was hopping Saturday. As congenial a group of supporters and fans as you could find.
Robinson’s and Wednesday Journal go way back. The paper is actually older than the ribs. In 1980 we launched the paper out of a basement apartment on Harrison Street near Lyman. The only place to eat on Harrison in those days was this little ice cream shop a half-block down that also served not half-bad hot dogs. And kid journalists can eat a fair number of hot dogs. Turns out Charlie was an ice cream distributor who made ribs as a serious hobby.
A year in, the paper was booted from the apartment. Something about an illegal use, said village hall. We moved to Oak Park Avenue where we’ve been ever since.
It was in 1982 that Charlie Robinson was one of 400 contestants in the first annual RibFest hosted by the great Daily News/Sun-Times/Tribune columnist Mike Royko. And when the smoke cleared that day, Charlie won. The poor kid from the Mississippi Delta wasted little time and soon opened Robinson’s #1 Ribs in his hometown of Oak Park.
This man, and his family, can work and they can cook. Always a top producer at the Taste of Chicago and every other street fest, Charlie saved my life a few years later when I was the co-chair of the late and great Midnight Madness festival on Oak Park Avenue. Not much of a fest without food. Back then the dining selections in Oak Park were sparse. Not much happening at Oak Park and Lake — stunning when you look there today — and despite all my urging I could not convince the Cottage Cupboard, now Maya, to stay up late and serve their dull fare to revelers.
So I called Charlie and he came with his crew and they sold a lot of pork products. As the years went by and restaurants started to arrive on our street, I’d get complaints about why Robinson’s was allowed in. “Because Charlie was there when we needed him,” I’d say.
On our way out, Charlie gave me a copy of his autobiography. It is a wonderful, sometimes stunning story of hard beginnings, hard work and, always, family.
There are a lot of new restaurants in Oak Park. But if you haven’t been to the newest oldest restaurant in the village, then get yourself to Charlie and Helen’s place.
