Andy and Sophie created a special place in Joliet

Andy and Sophie will be hard to replicate.

The owners of the beloved tavern on Hickory Street are able to retire Sunday, something they have been trying to do for six years.

“After 66, I tried to sell it,” Andy Wrobel, now 72, said while sitting on the stool at the end of the bar that has been his perch for decades. “I tell you one thing: It’s not easy. The banks don’t want to give a loan.”

Plenty of people were interested, Andy said. But lining up financing was always an issue until now.

The tavern on the corner of Moran Street that has been theirs since 1974 reopens Monday as Andy and Sophie’s.

New owner Patrick Walsh sees no reason to change a good thing. He will keep the name and the daily specials.

“What Sophie accomplished in a small kitchen is amazing,” said Walsh, who hears one question repeated when people learn he is taking over the tavern: “You’re going to keep the specials, aren’t you?”

The tavern has word-of-mouth fame from Sophie’s daily lunch specials: hot beef on Monday; meatloaf on Tuesday; corned beef and cabbage on Wednesday; cabbage rolls on Thursday; Polish sausage and sauerkraut or pork roast on Friday; and spaghetti on Saturday.

“I was 26 when we bought the bar,” Sophie said. “I never thought we’d be here that long, but it went so fast. When you’re working, time flies.”

Sophie never cooked outside the home and didn’t consider it a specialty until she and Andy went into the tavern business. Under the previous owner, the tavern provided Italian sausage and Sloppy Joes for customers.

“He told me how to do the sloppy Joes,” Sophie said. “But I changed the recipe.”

Both she and Andy came to the U.S. from Poland in the 1960s. The sloppy Joe was not a familiar food to her. But her sloppy Joe stayed on the menu the next 45 years.

The corned beef and cabbage she developed turned the bar with the Polish words “Zimne Piwo” on its outdoor Old Style sign into a destination on St. Patrick’s Day.

“On St. Patrick’s Day, I sold 1,000 to 1,200 pounds of corned beef,” Sophie said. “I have people come from Joliet, Shorewood, Romeoville, even Tinley Park.”

New bar manager Brittney Rupp has been learning all she can from Sophie. But the lessons in the kitchen can be frantic.

“She’s pouring the salt, and I’m trying to count the salt,” Rupp said, noting there are no written recipes. “Only what I write.”

Lunch ends at 2 p.m., however, and people keep coming.

“There are men who have been coming here since they were in college, and now they’re in their 50s and 60s,” Rupp said. “There are generations of people coming in.”

She described Andy and Sophie’s as being “like a little local history of Joliet.”

But for chance, however, Andy and Sophie’s might have been quite different.

Andy said he actually was about to buy a bar up the street in 1974. He was waiting there one morning to meet the owner so they could go together to the bank. But the owner never showed up.

He decided to get a drink at the tavern on the corner of Hickory and Moran, and Andy told that owner about his business plans.

“He said, ‘I’ll sell you this one,’ ” Andy said.

They made a deal.

“I called Sophie. I said, ‘We’re going to get this place,’ ” Andy said.

Sophie is happy they did.

“I want to thank every customer,” she said. “Everyone who came here, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”