CLE Myths: Polish Boy Origins

Most of the Midwest can lay claim to meat and potatoes and Jell-O salad, but the Polish Boy is almost exclusively a Cleveland dish.

Today, there’s perhaps no version as well-known as Hot Sauce Williams’. That take on the sausage, coleslaw, french fry and barbecue-sauced sandwich has been featured on Man vs. Food and No Reservations, which has led some to believe it’s the original.

But unwrapping the mystery of just who first topped kielbasa with taters is a trickier order. While there’s no mention of the sandwich in The Plain Dealer before 1975, other writers, such as Nathan C. Crook of the food anthology We Eat What? have traced the signature sammie back to Virgil Whitmore Sr., a Cleveland barbecue pioneer who opened his first eatery Mt. Pleasant Bar-B-Q in 1942. But ask his grandchildren Vanessa, Vance Sr., Vernon Sr. and Virgil Whitmore III, and it’s not that clean-cut.

“There were a couple other guys [around Harvard Road] that were selling Polish Boys before our granddad,” says Virgil III, who worked with his grandfather growing up. “Some would go with just the slaw on top, some with the slaw and fries.”

Sensing potential in what was essentially a barbecue dinner on a bun, Whitmore Sr. popularized the sandwich in the late ’60s or early ’70s, his grandchildren say.

Barbara Williams, widow of Hot Sauce Williams co-founder Lemaud Williams, says the famed barbecue joint began serving Polish Boys in the early 1970s too, though she says the restaurant doesn’t claim to have invented it. In all likelihood, the Polish Boy was invented by a guy off the street.

“I think it was just something that happened,” she says. “I think we were selling the sausage, and somebody wanted it that way, with the coleslaw and the fries on it. That’s probably how it got started.”

Status: Busted

Read More: Click here to read the full list of 30 Myths That Define Cleveland