FOODIES LYLE AND TIM SOBCZAK

All-you-can-eat is more than a mantra at Post 120

Who: Lyle and Tim Sobczak

What they do: Manage the restaurant and banquet of Tanner Paull American Legion Post 120

It's unlikely that any historian will ever discover which was the very first fish fry in Milwaukee. That would be like determining which Egyptian was the first to suggest making a mummy.

But it is a matter of historical fact as to which was the first all-you-can-eat fish fry in Milwaukee, and it wasn't even in Milwaukee; it was in West Allis.

"Ruth and Louis Hirschinger ran into an all-you-can-eat chicken fry in New York," says Tim Sobczak, general manager of Tanner Paull Banquets at American Legion Post 120, 6922 W. Orchard St. "He thought, 'Hey, why not bring this back to Milwaukee for the fish fry.' "

The Hirschingers were, at the time, running the food service for the Tanner Paull Legion Post in West Allis. That was in 1957. Everyone else who has since said, "Have some more once, it's all-you- can-eat," has been walking in the shadow of Tanner Paull.

Ruth Hirschinger passed away Sept. 16 at the age of 82 (her husband died in 1989.) She didn't rate a full obituary, just a death notice. But Lyle Sobczak, Tim's father and the owner of Tanner Paull Banquets, thinks she deserves more credit. While her husband, Louis, had the idea, it was Ruth who made it happen.

And to Lyle Sobczak, it's a bit personal.

"Ruth started the fish fry in 1957, when she was 36 years old," Sobczak says. "I took over in 1987, exactly 30 years later, when I was 36 years old. And I learned later that she was born on October 25, 1921, exactly 30 years to the day before I was born in 1951.

"I feel like I was destined to run this place."

The Tanner Paull Friday fish fry was also the largest in the Milwaukee area for quite a while.

"We still do a couple hundred people a week," Lyle Sobczak says. "In the old days, they did over a thousand. Remember, you had 10,000 people employed within 10 blocks of the place."

By the time Sobczak took over, everything had changed: The factories were closed, the workers left scraping for jobs, the neat and vibrant blue-collar neighborhood turned into "a ghetto," he says. And the Tanner Paull post had been nearly gutted by a fire.

Within six months of the fire, Sobczak and the Legionnaires had put the place back together. And Sobczak, following in the footsteps of the Hirschingers, revived the all-you-can-eat fish fry.

Banquets are the main business, however, and the Sobczaks, both experienced chefs, along with Donald Zeromski, the sous chef they hired this year, do an average of three to four a week, with six or more affairs in a week not uncommon.

Wedding receptions are big business, and they provide a never- ending supply of light moments, either heart-touching or hilarious.

There are the many couples who had their weddings at Tanner Paull and have returned for their 50th or even 75th anniversaries.

Then there were the two couples who never showed up for their own receptions, and the time the bride's family, offended by an impersonator of the pope who showed up to greet guests, left in a huff. In each case, Sobczak says, "The party went on."

The Sobczaks essentially manage and run the post for the Legion members. But they reverentially steer clear of one room: the post's meeting room, which is named for Gen. John "Blackjack" Pershing. Harold Tanner and James Paull were West Allis men who died in combat in World War I. The post was founded in 1919.

"This is a World War II post now," says Sobczak, "at least 90 percent. They're getting a few new guys from the Gulf."

Fourteen members of Post 120 died in the past year. The Sobczaks salute them all.

Credit:MARY JO WALICKI

Source:MWALICKI@JOURNALSENTINEL.COM

Tim Sobczak (left) and his father, Lyle, operate the restaurant at the American Legion Post 120 in West Allis.

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