BRIDGEPORT — Monique Germain is a retired nurse and educator who has been a daily at Bridgeport’s charming Polo Inn since 2008.
A local of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Germain, 79, immigrated to Chicago when she was 20 to be taught English and attend St. Xavier College.
In late March, Germain’s husband of 53 years, Georges Germain, died of issues from kidney illness. Dave Samber, the chef, proprietor and founding father of Polo Inn, catered his repast at St. James Catholic Church in Douglas, the place he’d met the Germains.
“To my shock, [Samber] embellished the fellowship room with a Haitian background,” Germain, a Bronzeville resident, stated throughout an interview on the Polo Inn, 3322 S. Morgan St. “Servers have been sporting crimson and blue Haitian flags. He realized concerning the tradition. You don’t discover that whenever you order meals for about 200 individuals. You’re going to get common meals.”
The Polo Inn is just not a daily place.
The restaurant, banquet corridor and mattress and breakfast will have fun its fortieth anniversary Aug. 7. Samber has introduced goodwill to the neighborhood because the day he opened the doorways as a sweet and nut store.
“I’ve a granddaughter, a niece and a nephew. They grew up like Dave’s youngsters. After they have been youngsters, he employed them to work within the restaurant,” stated Germain, who loves the Polo’s creme brulee French toast for breakfast, lunch or dinner. “Everyone is aware of Dave. We name him Polo.”
From The Cornfields To Chicago
Everyone calls the Polo Inn the Polo.
“Once I determined to open a enterprise, I believed if I used to be going to pay a greenback per letter each time I print my identify, I need the shortest identify attainable,” Samber stated throughout a protracted dialog on the restaurant.
The Polo Inn harkens again to the farmland of Polo, Illinois, about 120 miles west of Chicago.
In 1982, Samber renovated a Thirties, 5,000-bushel corn crib into his summer season getaway house alongside Route 64 in Polo. A Cleveland native and Valparaiso College graduate, Samber was dwelling in Chicago on the time and dealing as an actual property developer.
In September 1984, Samber obtained a name about an deserted brownstone on South Morgan Road in Bridgeport. It was in-built 1914 as Kupsha’s Confectionary, a sweet retailer and ice cream parlor. He was instructed to behave quick.
Samber was dwelling in a condominium within the Gold Coast together with his associate, Darrell Windle. The couple went to see the constructing the subsequent day, Samber stated.
“We walked in and the odor was so dangerous, we needed to put handkerchiefs over our mouths. There have been two toes of standing water within the basement,” Samber stated. “I didn’t understand I had purchased on the worst avenue within the neighborhood. … There have been 16 lively taverns from thirty first to Pershing Highway.”
When Samber opened Polo Nuts and Sweet in 1985, his hours have been 9 a.m.-9 p.m. every day. A yr later, he moved into an upstairs condominium.
Within the early Nineteen Nineties, when Dominick’s opened a grocery retailer in Bridgeport, Samber knew he needed to increase from nuts and candies. He modified the identify to Polo Cafe and Catering in 1990 and launched the restaurant.
In 1992, Samber started a profitable 21-year-run with Style of Chicago. In that point, he served greater than 500,000 parts of garlic mozzarella cheese bread and over 2 million baked crab muffins, he stated.
Samber expanded the enterprise once more in 1997 with the Outdated Eagle Banquet Room, changing the outdated Eagle theater subsequent door to the Polo. The 300-seat theater opened in 1914 and ran till a minimum of 1952, Samber stated.
“It was an auto physique restore store for 30 years,” he stated. “It was an EPA nightmare. However as an actual property developer, it was a very good problem.”
In September 2008, Samber opened the mattress and breakfast above the restaurant, and in 2017, he rebranded the complete enterprise because the Polo Inn.
‘Ministry Of Hospitality’
The Polo is open noon-6:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday and noon-8 p.m. Friday-Saturday.
Gospel brunch is served 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sundays within the restaurant and the banquet room, with music delivered on a Rodgers 360 theater organ within the banquet corridor. The corridor holds 100 individuals, and the restaurant seats 50.
The struggles of impartial, mom-and-pop eating places are effectively documented. Meals, taxes and labor prices are rising.
Samber employs six individuals full-time.
“The underside line is just not my purpose,” he stated. “It is a labor of affection. That is my life. That is the place I share who I’m and what I’ve to supply to the world, anyone who walks via that door. … That is my ministry of hospitality.”
Felice Pomierski, the third-generation proprietor of Pomierski Funeral Dwelling, established in 1907 in Bridgeport, remembers when Governor’s Desk at thirty first and Halsted streets was the fine-dining spot within the neighborhood.
“When that burned down [in 1982], there was no superb eating on South Morgan. In many of the locations round right here, you have been fortunate in case you acquired a paper serviette,” Pomierski stated. “Dave introduced scrumptious choices.”
When Germain and her fellow parishioners have been working to avoid wasting the historic St. James Church from closing, Samber supplied the Polo as a gathering place.
“Each Tuesday we met to strategize on how we may hold that church open,” Germain stated. “He was a frontrunner in standing up in opposition to the Archdiocese of Chicago.”
The church, in-built 1879, was razed in 2013, however the faculty auditorium was saved, which is the place providers are held right now. The Polo caters occasions for the various congregation, and lots of the parishioners are Polo clients.
“I give him credit score for selling interracial relationships,” Germain stated. “Individuals like me, years in the past, I bear in mind coming to a financial institution a couple of blocks away they usually scratched my automobile. It’s welcoming right here. I don’t know if it’s the gospel music, the meals or no matter.”
Bridgeport’s Previous Looms Giant
A inexperienced chalkboard is the prelude to the Polo expertise. Positioned close to the entrance door, the 10-foot-long, 4-foot-high chalkboard has been a part of the place since Samber opened. He wrote the menu of sweet, nuts, sugar-free goodies and popcorn on the chalkboard.
Neighbor Jacquelyn Harrison created a mural on the chalkboard in 1986 as a nod to the mayors from Bridgeport: Michael Bilandic, Martin Kennelly, Howard Kelly and Richard J. Daley. Richard M. Daley was added in 1989. The mural additionally highlights stockyard barons like Philip Armour and Gus Swift.
“These are individuals who gave jobs to the neighborhood,” Samber stated, wanting on the paintings.
Samber is proud to serve Licensed Angus Beef, a nod to the neighborhood’s connection to the Union Stockyards. The Mayor’s Steak is a well-liked merchandise: 8 ounces of Licensed Angus Beef served with romaine lettuce and aioli sauce on a baguette.
Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley first visited the Polo at Christmas 2010 together with his spouse, Maggie, Samber stated. Samber catered an occasion for 74 of the mayor’s kinfolk within the banquet corridor, and he gave Daley a tour of the Mayor’s Suite within the upstairs mattress and breakfast. It turned out to be Maggie Daley’s final Christmas. She died in November 2011.
Whereas former Mayor Daley is a large White Sox fan, Samber stated extra of the Polo’s bed-and-breakfast clients select a Cubs recreation.
“I drop them off on the Purple Line at Sox Park they usually go north,” he stated.
‘We’re Not Completed’
Samber is just not planning an enormous fortieth anniversary social gathering, however he’s providing particular $40 dinners for 2, BYOB.
And in case you’re fortunate, you would possibly get serenaded by Samber.
Samber was a choir boy in highschool in Cleveland. He later sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Refrain and the Robert Shaw Chorale. His son, Bentley Joyner, is a live performance violinist and has accompanied his father a number of instances. Samber additionally sings at memorial providers for neighbors.
“I sing in the important thing of loud so I all the time acquired the solos,” Samber stated. “I’ve lobbied for years to sing at Comiskey and haven’t gotten anyplace,” including that White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf has dined on the restaurant.
The curtain has not but been known as on this treasured cultural campus in Bridgeport.
“I intend to die in my soup,” Samber stated. “So long as my well being is sweet. I’m 75 now, it’s and it isn’t, however so long as the workers retains up.”
Has Samber thought of what occurs when he strikes on?
“There might be an enormous rummage sale,” he stated with fun. “We’ve talked about it with the workers. We’re all shut. They don’t assume they may run it with out me.
“Alternatively, we’re not completed. I’ve numerous gratitude I wish to share and that’s why it’s necessary I hold going.”
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