Whether one is born and raised or has immigrated here, to live in the United States is to be reared and weaned on fried chicken in one of its various forms. People crave that crunchy, juicy, often spicy bite of familiarity: chicken dinners at a family-style restaurant, an order of nuggets from the drive-thru, takeout from your favorite Asian spot, wings at the bar, the iconic and coveted bucket of chicken, or a plant-based variant (yes, vegans lust after fried chicken, too). In northeast Ohio, many claim allegiance to Barberton chicken.
Best I can remember, the first time I ate Barberton chicken I was sixteen and with my high school girlfriend. It wasn’t a date or a special occasion. Her sister’s boyfriend had been talking about an outing to the chicken house in Barberton for weeks, eager to share the restaurant’s golden treasure. When the day finally arrived, my girlfriend and I rode with her parents, who followed the sister, the sister’s boyfriend, his buddy, and the buddy’s girlfriend, if memory serves. After a fifteen-minute drive, we were in the parking lot of what looked like a 1950s lounge or banquet hall, the front of which was all plate-glass windows. A large plastic illuminated sign read “Milich’s VILLAGE INN/CHICKEN DINNERS.” Inside the waiting area stood an old penny scale, and each of us took turns dropping a penny into its slot and weighing ourselves before we ate.
Once seated, the sister’s boyfriend ordered us all the same thing: regular chicken dinners consisting of four pieces of fried chicken, French fries, coleslaw, and hot sauce. He and his buddy ordered extra plates of chicken and bowls of hot sauce. I knew people loved hot sauce with chicken. I mean, my girlfriend ate Frank’s Red Hot on everything. But extra bowls of hot sauce seemed a bit much. Awaiting our chicken, we snacked on slices of cheap white bread with butter. When our meals arrived, I discovered the “hot sauce” was not sauce in the conventional sense but a rice and tomato sauce dish seasoned with hot peppers, something akin to Spanish rice. There was so much food on the table—I felt as if we were in a competition to finish everything on our plates, and then some. The chicken was golden, juicy, underseasoned yet almost sweet, and had a moderately crispy crust, but the hot sauce was a thing of wonder, even to an uncultured sixteen-year-old. I really don’t remember much more from that evening—it was twenty years ago. However, my experience was far from unique. Most people who have walked through the doors of one of the now four Barberton chicken houses have had a similar first-time experience of eating quality fried chicken and being wowed by the hot sauce. Back then I didn’t have the appreciation I do now for regional fried chicken, especially a variety that fed generations of northeast Ohioans and was as much rooted in the town’s history as it was in its Eastern European—specifically Serbian—tradition.
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Barberton was a planned community, and its history reads much like many industrial towns of the Midwest. Land was bought or taken from Indigenous people who were later forcibly removed (or killed), and that land was surveyed and sold to settlers or magnates. Towns were built for or alongside industry. Eventually, when the industry abandoned the town, so did some of its residents, departing for more promising urban and suburban enclaves, leaving buildings to crumble, houses to rot, and machinery to rust.
In early 1890, “America’s Match King” Ohio Columbus Barber and three associates purchased 550 acres of farmland to the west of the Tuscarawas River, intending to establish a manufacturing city perfectly positioned between two prominent rivers, a busy canal, and two bustling railroad lines. Barber hired M. J. Alexander, a Pennsylvanian who had developed a “magic formula” for turning farmland into thriving industrial communities and had successfully “boomed” several Pennsylvania towns in the 1880s. Barber hired another Pennsylvanian, William A. Johnston, to survey and lay out the new town. Johnston designed the original plan with picturesque Lake Anna, a spring-fed glacial lake, and a twenty-acre park at the town’s center. In 1891, the town of Barberton was taking shape, with industries operating, streets being graded, and homes and businesses being built. As industry and amenities increased, so did the population over the next couple of decades from 1,800 in 1892 to nearly 20,000 by 1920. This early population boom earned Barberton the nickname “Magic City” (City of Barberton 2022).
During the early part of the twentieth century, the town began drawing large numbers of immigrants due to its thriving factories. By 1930, a large portion of Barberton’s immigrant population was from Eastern and Southern Europe. They created numerous social and cultural institutions, such as churches and clubs, designed to preserve their traditional beliefs and customs and provide them with a comfortable haven. Although they were part of the town, many immigrants were viewed as foreigners by their native-born, white counterparts and were unable to participate in the town’s operation. Many lived in neighborhoods on the west side, which at the time was not within the town’s borders. So they went to great lengths to assimilate into society by Anglicizing their first or last names and sometimes completely dropping their native language—ways to make themselves appear less “ethnic” by societal standards. However, in 1933, one Serbian family on the east side opened an eatery in their farmhouse that would forever change the town’s identity.
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It all begins with Belgrade Gardens.
Manojlo “Mike” Topalsky, at age twelve, emigrated from Yugoslavia, now Serbia, to Barberton with his parents in 1904. He met Smiljka, who had arrived in Barberton with her family, also from Serbia, when she was thirteen. They married in 1925. Mike ran a small deli in downtown Barberton, while his father operated a 300-acre dairy farm on the outskirts of the east side of town. When Mike’s father died in 1930, they lost the family farm at a sheriff’s sale. A man from Wooster, Ohio, purchased the farm and approached Mike about returning to operate it for him, so the Topalskys moved back. On July 4th, 1933, they opened an eatery out of that farmhouse, serving soups and sandwiches, and called it Belgrade Gardens, a nod to the capital city of their beloved homeland (Abraham 2013).
As the story goes, according to daughter Sophia Papich, one day Smiljka was cooking supper for her family in the back over a kerosene stove, and two businessmen, one of whom was the president of National Bank, had come in for a meal. While browsing the selection of food, they caught a whiff of something cooking that wasn’t on the menu. They followed the scent to the back room and asked if they could have what she was making. That dinner consisted of Serbian staples: pohovana piletina, breaded chicken fried in lard; pomfrit, fried potatoes; djuvece, a rice and tomato sauce dish seasoned with hot peppers; and kupus salata, a vinegar-based cabbage slaw. After finishing their dinner of fried chicken and potatoes, the men questioned why a meal this good wasn’t served at the restaurant. And thus, the first Serbian-owned Barberton chicken house was born.
The Topalskys were surprised but pleased that the food they were raised on had been so well received by their regular customers. Business went so well, in fact, by 1940, only seven years after they had opened, they were able to buy back the farmhouse and about sixty acres of land. Although the chicken dinners appealed to a large clientele, Belgrade Gardens retained the characteristics of their Serbian identity. Many of their employees and customers were either family or Eastern European immigrants, most of whom were part of the local ethnic societies. But there were a handful of longtime nonfamily employees who dreamed of opening their own chicken houses. Their names were Helen Devore, Catherine Milich, Mary Markovich, and Mertie Palmer.
In 1945, Catherine Milich and Mertie Palmer, joined by their husbands Mirko and Joe, respectively, opened Hopocan Gardens on Hopocan Street in a building owned by Helen Devore and her husband. In 1950, Mary Markovich, the godmother of Mike Topalsky, with her second husband Louis Pavkov started White House Chicken. In 1955, the Milichs sold their share of the business and started Milich’s Village Inn. Hopocan Gardens employee Eileen Johnson and her husband bought the Milichs’ share. The restaurant operated until the Devores terminated the lease in 1962. The Devores then took over ownership, practically building the business again from scratch. Johnson and Palmer then opened Terrace Gardens (right next door to Hopocans), which stayed in business until 1997, when it turned off its fryers for the last time. These restaurants served virtually the same Serbian-style chicken dinners, with slight variation, in the similar no-nonsense dining décor—lots of leatherette, linoleum, shellacked wood trim, pastel, and wallpaper that harkens to the vintage banquet halls and cafeterias of yesteryear (Taylor 1991).
As the offshoots have changed hands over the years, Belgrade Gardens, the original Barberton chicken house, has stayed a family operation since its inception. When Mike Topalsky died, Smiljka’s daughter Sophia and her husband Kosta Papich took over ownership and operation. They oversaw the expansion and remodeling of the restaurant and the addition of other beloved Slavic dishes, such as chicken paprikash, ćevapi (grilled sausages), and sarma (cabbage rolls), food that highlighted Eastern European flavors and techniques. They also added typical American entrees, such as fried fish and hamburgers. Despite small changes over the years, the quality, taste, and customer service have remained consistent—a claim not many restaurants can make. And when customers enter Belgrade Gardens today, they’ll most likely be greeted by Milos and Maja Papich, the son and daughter-in-law of Kosta and Sofia. They manage the restaurant with the same pride and tradition as their grandparents.
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The success of Barberton chicken has always been the quality and simplicity that began in Smiljka’s kitchen almost ninety years ago. There’s no secret recipe or proprietary spice mixture, which seems odd given the variety of spices used in Slavic cuisine. No special marinade, rub, or breading. There are, however, basic tenets that make the quality and taste of the chicken practically ubiquitous among all the chicken houses. First, the chicken is fresh, never frozen, and the bird is young, weighing about two and a half pounds. The chickens are locally raised on free-range farms, fed with natural food, and typically purchased from Amish farmers. Second, the chicken is seasoned only with salt. After being dredged in flour, an egg wash, and breadcrumbs that unmistakably taste of cornmeal, the chicken sets overnight. Third, and the most crucial tenet, the chicken is fried in lard to achieve a crisp, bronzed coating that holds multitudes: juice, heat, umami, and a hint of sweetness. This “porcine baptism,” as John T. Edge writes in Fried Chicken: An American Story, leaves Barberton fried chicken “sheathed in a crisp but slightly chewy mantle” (2004: 24). This being the case, each batch of fried chicken is typically a twenty-minute wait because it is cooked to order and fried at a low temperature, putting the product in a different league from that of fast-food chicken chains. As an addendum, Smiljka broke down and used the whole bird, saving the back to fry and serve. Belgrade Gardens unofficially dubs this piece “chicken ribs” and sells a lot of them. Although the meat is sparce on a back, it is rich and tasty, with a wealth of crust to consume. The French even have a term for this part of the chicken—sot-l’y-laisse, which means “the fool leaves it there.” Edge was no fool and quickly gained an appreciation for gnawing on some chicken ribs.
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In the 1970s, during the golden age of fried chicken, Barberton chicken houses collectively sold 30,000 chicken dinners a week. Lines of people poured out the doors of each restaurant, especially on Sundays after church. The restaurants air-mailed fried chicken all over the United States and shipped it overseas to Barbertonians stationed in Vietnam. With such ravenous poultry consumption, Barberton declared itself the “Fried Chicken Capital of the World,” a nickname most Southerners likely scoffed at. No matter. It was an exciting time to own a chicken house in Barberton.
The 1980s, however, saw a decline in the city’s industry and economy, including the closure of Seiberling Rubber, Ohio Brass, Rockwell Automation, and the downsizing of PPG. The chicken houses were one of the few constants for its citizens, a refuge during economic uncertainty and dramatic change. While factories shuttered, businesses left town, and unemployment increased, people could still sit down and enjoy an inexpensive meal of fried chicken that hadn’t changed, depreciated, or sold out. Groups like the Neighborhood Conservation Services (NCS) and the United Way, headed by Barberton officials, community members, and industry leaders, were devising plans for revitalizing the city and the direction it should head. As Barberton’s centennial was quickly approaching and town spirit was low, the city needed something to celebrate. Enter Chickenfest!
In 1988, to kick off its annual half-million-dollar fundraising campaign, the Barberton Area United Way introduced a weekend festival around the theme of the city’s iconic fried chicken, capitalizing on the success and popularity of its restaurants. Chickenfest was intended to bring awareness of the United Way’s community-wide involvement and provide a fun-filled weekend of festivities and the opportunity to engorge oneself on as much fried chicken as possible. Huge signs were posted throughout the city, and banners hung over streets to announce Chickenfest. Organized on the southern shore of beautiful Lake Anna and the adjacent West Park Avenue, the festival offered crafts, raffles, games, and an array of chicken-themed activities, including chicken Olympics, best chicken joke, a chicken-calling contest, egg tosses, dunking rubber chickens into basketball hoops, putt-putt golf with hardboiled eggs, and a chicken coop jail where attendees could pay one dollar to have someone locked up for five minutes. All the Barberton chicken houses were represented, participating in friendly competition, boasting their recipe and reputation, and donating their time and resources. Some employees even dressed as chickens to serve their chicken. A life-size Barberton Chicken mascot walked around greeting and taking pictures with festival-goers. Live polka music played as the soundtrack. All kitsch aside, Chickenfest was a unique way to bring the community together, draw attention to Barberton, celebrate the Topalskys’ legacy, and embrace Barberton’s biggest draw—Serbian-style fried chicken.
The United Way–sponsored event lasted until the early 2000s, when the organization put an end to the festival, keeping the rights to the name. Not long after the cancellation of Chickenfest, then Mayor Randy Hart (coincidentally?) introduced a plan to reshape Barberton’s image—to this day, one of the city’s biggest blunders. Although pivotal in the town’s rebuilding, the plan included shedding (er, molting?) its Chicken Capital reputation. Although Hart professed to be an advocate and a patron of Barberton’s legendary chicken houses (you’d be crazy not to be), maybe he, like other residents, had grown tired of the taunts from fans of opposing sports teams who would show up at Barberton High School games with KFC buckets on their heads (Barberton takes its high school sports very seriously).
Whatever the social climate was at that time, Brian Canale, grandson of the Devores and owner of Hopocan Gardens and White House Chicken, took this rebranding of the city as an insult. Kosta Papich, owner of Belgrade Gardens, was also puzzled by the move, remaining quite proud to be associated with chicken. And rightfully so. Cities need to have more than one attraction for visitors—well, in this example, businesses or investors might be the more accurate term—so to downplay one attraction in order to refocus on or build up another sounded ludicrous to some. Nashville doesn’t downplay its hot chicken to focus more on its music scene; the city brags hard about the Grand Ole Opry and about Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. If you really want visitors, you embrace—and promote—everything good about your city, especially since both Belgrade Gardens and the Hopocan Gardens/White House organization have been generous donors of and partners with Barberton Athletics, the Community Fund, the NCS, and much more. In a 2010 interview with radio station WAKR, Canale said given the number of people employed, collectively, the chicken houses might be one of the top five employers in Barberton. Shouldn’t this kind of community investment and heritage make all of Barberton proud to have fried chicken associated with its name?
After the image-reshaping debacle, Hart mostly walked back his “don’t say chicken” stance, helped create an enormous redevelopment plan that was voted in, and served another six years (fifteen total), making him Barberton’s longest serving mayor. Regardless of the direction the city chose to go with its image, Barberton chicken began gaining some real national recognition in the culinary world. John T. Edge, food writer and founding director of the Southern Food Alliance, wrote an article about the Barberton birds that later became its own chapter in his book Fried Chicken: An American Story. Barberton chicken was showcased in several publications by legendary food writers and former couple Michael and Jane Stern. Belgrade Gardens and White House Chicken went head to head in 2010 on Michael Symon’s show Food Feuds, Symon declaring Belgrade Gardens the winner. In 2018, Ohio expat Ronald Koltnow penned a history book specifically about the legendary dish. Shortly after, the Food Network added Belgrade Gardens to its list of “Best Fried Chicken in Every State.” Accolades continue in dozens of articles from food publications. Most recently, the PBS show Roadfood, hosted by Misha Collins, dedicated an entire episode to Barberton chicken. With this kind of consistent attention over the years, it’s hard not to view this situation as “Come for the fried chicken, stay for the rest of the city.”
There’s no doubt Barberton is a city still searching for its identity. The Magic City, like many other Rust Belt cities, has had to come to terms with the loss of industry and residents, rising unemployment, rebuilding infrastructure and lives, and forging a new identity, one of resilience, true community, and brighter futures. The city has seen much change since its centennial in 1991. Investment in education and urban development has allowed for the construction of new schools, technology upgrades, the removal of blight and dilapidated buildings, and citywide street projects. The Lake 8 Movie Theatre and the Magical Theatre Company for young audiences have both had major renovations. Other arts organizations and galleries have popped up throughout the growing downtown. Two breweries have since opened their doors and taps: Ignite Brewing Company and Magic City Brewing. A stretch of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail makes its way through the city limits, while historical spots like O. C. Barber’s Anna Dean Farm and the Erie Depot have been restored, the latter housing a quaint café. Lake Anna still hosts concerts and festivals, such as the annual Mum Festival, which bursts with a rainbow of color. I—and I assume many others—would like to see a Magic City Chicken Festival in the near future. It seems only fair.
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Like Barberton, the chicken houses have also seen change, albeit the chicken and that delicious hot sauce remain the same. The owners of Hopocans bought White House, and White House now operates multiple locations. Belgrade Gardens had opened a second location that operated for years until the COVID-19 pandemic led them to permanently close that restaurant. The owners of the Village Inn have changed twice since the Milichs walked away in 2014. New owner Mary Beers bought the place amid the pandemic in December 2020 and has worked hard to recreate the same chicken dinners she loved when the Milichs owned the place. Beers found an old Milich handwritten recipe for their fried chicken, rehired the veteran Village Inn cook Glen “Cookie” Cooke and some original servers, and even tested various lards and potatoes until they yielded the exact flavor and texture she remembered. She essentially reverse-engineered the place and its food to give the restaurant the taste and feel it once had. They also added steaks to the menu, which got some of the residents talking—it was a thread in nearly every conversation I overheard on a recent visit for lunch. All establishments have remodeled or renovated to an extent over the years, expanding dining capacity and making cosmetic changes. Servers have come and gone, and the pandemic has created a demand for hospitality workers, even at these age-old establishments. One situation due in part to the pandemic that all the chicken houses—and the entire restaurant industry—found themselves in was a surge in takeout orders and fewer dine-in customers. White House could see the direction in which the industry was headed and permanently moved its flagship restaurant’s dining operations to carry-out only, because it made sense financially. But just because the chicken houses have had to adjust their business models does not mean they are sacrificing quality, flavor, or service. All the restaurants still cook the chicken to order, fried low and slow. That will never change.
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On a snowy day in January, Belgrade Gardens’ large red and yellow sign is a beacon on the stretch of mostly residential road on the east side of Barberton. I pull into the huge asphalt parking lot that has been plowed, salted, and is dotted with a handful of cars. I’ve brought my parents and fiancée for lunch. Nothing looks different from the outside as we near the burgundy awning and walk to the front entrance of the farmhouse restaurant.
Inside we’re greeted by Maja Papich from behind a plexiglass barrier near the cash register, taking phone orders and shouting Serbian to the kitchen staff. A few people wait for takeout. “Sorry for the dust/We are remodeling” is printed on sheets of white copy paper and taped near every doorway. They traded wallpaper for a two-toned gray color scheme, somewhat keeping with interior design trends. The ceiling tiles also have a new coat of flat white paint. They removed the large black wood framing in the hallway near the restrooms, along with the corkboards full of clippings from decades of praise and recognition. Only the framed articles, a portrait of Mike and Smiljka, and the landscape paintings of Belgrade, Serbia, remain on the walls. The juxtaposition of remodeling and the folk paintings bring to mind their slogan: “Where the Old World Meets the New.” An older host leads us to our seats in the main dining room occupied by only a few diners.
We sit in a booth next to a window overlooking the backyard blanketed in snow. We get water and soft drinks served to us in red plastic tumbler cups with faded white Coca-Cola logos. I order a bottle of Jelen Pivo, a Serbian beer. The server brings us a basket of assorted bread, rye and Italian. We snack on bread and butter as we wait for our food. Like most people, we talk about the chicken, past visits to the restaurant, and the general goings-on of our lives. When the food arrives, we gawk at the mounds of fried chicken and fries, taking in the aroma of the dishes of hot sauce as if it’s our first time here. My mom gets a small meal of thighs, my dad a regular white meat; I get a regular dark meat and some chicken backs, and my fiancée orders sides because poultry hasn’t appealed to her during pregnancy. We sink our teeth into that hot, lard-fried crust for a mouthful of chicken that is so juicy and satisfying, the flavor always like nothing else, a taste that lingers in your memory.
Belgrade Gardens, much like the other remaining chicken houses, has been deeply committed to feeding its patrons through the best and worst years of Barberton’s history. Through an economic downturn, pandemic uncertainty, and diners’ evolving preferences, Belgrade Gardens remains a constant. While this city joins many Great Lakes post-industrial cities in a kind of Rust Belt revival with the hope of breathing life back into their community, this landmark establishment survives by continuing to offer a unique dish customers love, one that honors traditional and local foodways. What originated in Serbia and was brought to this small Midwest town over a hundred years ago has become an authentic part of this region’s flavors and culture, which is why when you think of Barberton, Ohio, or even the Rust Belt, you should think Serbian-style fried chicken.
University of California Press