Earlier this year, we set out to trace the origins of a cheeseburger.
It wasn’t just any cheeseburger. It was the Big Baby: a traditional South Side double cheeseburger topped with grilled onions. We thought if we found the inventor of the Big Baby, we could find the origin of the several Nicky’s restaurants on the South Side that all serve that same burger, but seem to have different owners.
All of our leads pointed to octogenarian Nicholas Vagenas. And so we tried to track him down. We dialed several numbers. We friended him on Facebook. We even reached out to his priest, but he never called us back.
That is until a few weeks ago — when he finally got in touch and spilled all the proverbial beans.
Listen to our interview with him by pushing the “play” button above.
Monica Eng is a reporter for Curious City. You can follow her @monicaeng.
