When Pierogi Fest opened for the year at 11:00 am on a Friday, the vendor-lined streets of Whiting’s downtown immediately filled with people. Not even rain stopped the crowds lining up for places like Dan’s Pierogies.
Pierogi Are Celebrated in All Their Forms at an Irreverent Northwest Indiana Festival
Kim Kovacik
August 7, 2025
The annual Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Indiana celebrates the Eastern European heritage of Northwest Indiana both lovingly and irreverently. Credit: Kim Kovacik for WTTW
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Every summer, the small town of Whiting, Indiana outside Chicago is overtaken by pierogi big and small, sweet and savory, plain and on a burger, edible and human. The crowds of people who come to Whiting’s Pierogi Fest far outnumber the town’s population of less than five thousand people – and they’re met by far more than vendors serving Polish dumplings.
There’s Mr. Pierogi himself, along with his entourage of 11 Pieroguettes. Miss Paczki and Halupki Guy are life-size versions of filled donuts and stuffed cabbage, evidence of the other Polish dishes on offer. Women adorned in curlers, headscarves, pearls, and brooch-studded aprons hobble around 119th St. in brightly clashing housecoats, ready to pose for a photo and maybe even plant some crimson lipstick on a cheek, just like the Polish American grandmothers or “buscias” they’re honoring.
But the real draw, of course, are the pierogi themselves. They’re filled with cheese, potato, kraut, mushroom, plum, blueberry, and cherry, boiled in a pot or fried up on a flattop to be served alongside cabbage, sausage, kabobs, and potato pancakes over three days in July. Photographer Kim Kovacik spent a day photographing all the delicious dumplings.
All photos by Kim Kovacik for WTTW.
Dan’s is a festival favorite that built a business off its popularity at Pierogi Fest. Co-owner Lisa Keith-Barber grew up in Whiting; Dan’s debuted at Pierogi Fest in 1998, eventually building on success there to open a storefront in nearby Highland, Indiana.
Out of their plethora of pierogi fillings, the most popular is potato and cheddar.
Whiting’s Pierogi Fest started in the early ’90s, only a few years before Dan’s first started serving at it. Much of the town is taken up by a refinery built by Standard Oil in the late nineteenth century. This, along with the steel mills, chemical factories, and industrial ports lining Lake Michigan to the south and southeast of Chicago drew immigrant workers, including a large number from Eastern Europe.
Over the decades, a unique Polish American community emerged. “Babcia,” the Polish word for grandmother, became “buscia,” and her “pierogies” found their way into bars and restaurants, acquiring American fillings like cheddar in addition to an “s” at the end, even though “pierogi” is already plural in Polish.
It’s this heritage that Pierogi Fest celebrates – lovingly and irreverently. Among the festival’s official characters are the buscias, some of whom wear jewelry and clothing passed down from their own grandmothers, who also taught plenty of descendants to make pierogi.
“We’ve had people say to us, ‘That’s what my grandma used to wear,’” one buscia said this year.
“We’ve been doing this for over 30 years,” she continued. “We already took 1,000 photos. It’s a lot of fun!”
They’re not the only group wandering the festival. The Galoots are five friends from the West Side of Chicago who have been coming to Pierogi Fest for 22 years. They’ve known each other since grade school, and wear custom T-shirts depicting them all as cartoon pierogi.
But the official anthropomorphic pierogi of the festival is Mr. Pierogi. You’ll find him carrying a big rolling pin, perhaps following an accordion player.
Along with Miss Paczki, Halupki Guy, and the Pieroguettes, he’s a highlight of the festival’s parade, which has been led by now-retired CBS meteorologist Steve Baskerville for years. You’ll also spot a “Lawnmower brigade” in the parade – a kind of male equivalent to the buscias.
The wackiness carries over to the merchandise available for sale…
…and cheeky signage.
Each year, a vendor is awarded a trophy, whose cup is filled with a fake dumpling, for “best pierogi of the fest.”
“This is the best festival in the Chicagoland area,” said Roy Kosinski of Ace Catering, which was founded in Whiting in 2001 and has been serving at Pierogi Fest ever since.
In addition to pierogi, the family business serves grilled kabobs from Dragobobs and cabbage and dumplings.
Both Kosinski and Lisa Keith-Barber of Dan’s Pierogies emphasize that they make pierogi the “traditional” way, but there’s also experimentation on hand at the festival – like the bacon cheddar pierogi smash burger served by first-time Pierogi Fest vendor One13North of Crown Point, Indiana.
There’s also non-Polish food on offer, like Ptashka Crepes’ nalysnyky, or stuffed Ukrainian crepes.
Ptashka was started by Jenya Semenkova and her mother, who immigrated to a suburb of Detroit from Odessa, Ukraine. “We drove from Michigan for five hours through thunderstorms to get here,” Semenkova said, marveling at the number of people at the festival.
That’s not the furthest journey to the festival. According to Pierogi Fest, which is organized by the Whiting-Robertsdale Chamber of Commerce, the event attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to Whiting every year. “We know people who come up from Florida to come to this festival,” Kosinski says.
Susana’s Pierogis reflects another chapter in the history of Whiting, which has become increasingly Hispanic and Latino in recent decades: Susana’s appears at both Pierogi Fest and Whiting’s Empanada Fest, serving up churros, tamales, aguas fresca, empanadas, and, yes, pierogi at the latter.
Decades in, Pierogi Fest continues to evolve as younger generations step up to the flattop and provide their own take on tradition – all with a bit of kooky eccentricity thrown in.
