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Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans.
This project sponsored by a grant from Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q
Pete's Famous
Hot Dogs
1925 2nd Ave. North
Birmingham, AL 35203
(205) 252-2905
[There’s] something about [these hot dogs]. I
mean, you can take a hot dog and wrap it up and put it in a sack, and
go out there and eat it. It doesn’t taste the same as it does
when it’s in here. This preacher s—s—said it’s
something in these walls that, you know—that makes it taste like
that. And that’s true.
--Gus Koutroulakis
Birmingham legend, Gus Koutroulakis, has been slinging hot dogs from the same tiny stand in downtown Birmingham, Pete’s Famous, since 1948. According to Gus, his Uncle Pete and a buddy bought the place in 1939 with money they won in a Pinochle game. Pete renamed the place after his self-proclaimed famous dogs when he bought out his business partner in 1946. That same year, Pete installed the colorful neon sign that still lights up 2nd Avenue. And Gus still makes his dogs the same way his uncle did: “all the way” with mustard, kraut, and special sauce. Or, you can order a “special,” with a beef topping that’s—be careful—not chili. The classic sauce is unique to Birmingham and certainly a Greek addition to classic take-away fare. No one’s quite sure who came up with it, but variations on that same sauce can be found all over town. A visit to Pete’s Famous is quite an experience, so when you visit, spend some time taking in Gus’s hot dog wisdom and learning interesting tidbits from loyal customers, while downing a few of what are arguably the most famous dogs in Birmingham. The record, by the way, is eighteen hot dogs eaten in one visit.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that
has been edited for length. To
download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click this link. (Adobe Acrobat Reader required)
Subject: Gus Koutroulakis, owner
Date: March 8 & 9, 2004 @ 3:00 p.m.
Location: Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs
Interviewer: Amy Evans
Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Mong—Monday, March eighth, two thousand and four in Birmingham, Alabama, on 2nd Avenue North at Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs. And we have a customer here—
Gus Koutroulakis: Pete’s Famous.
--at Pete’s Famous, who has a short story to tell. And what is your name, sir?
CUSTOMER: Uh, Danny Speakman. Uh, the day that I was born in the hospital, my father, uh, had walked down here from the hospital and got him some hot dogs. He always used to come down here and get hot dogs. And, uh, so he was down here getting hot dogs when my mom was giving birth and, uh, after I was old enough to get up and come down, we’ve been coming here for years and years—getting hot dogs.
------
All right. And this is the proprietor, Gus Koutroulakis. And you told me earlier that your given name is Constantine, correct?
Constantine, right. Constantine George Koutroulakis. [His wife Kathy gives a short laugh in the background] That’s my given name. That’s my—
And everybody just started calling you George—I mean, Gus. I apologize. [Laughs]
No, I just—well, I--it’s just for short. You know, like—like they call—like the—Robert, they call him Bob, you know.
------
So how long have you been here?
Been here since--January the eighteenth, nineteen forty-eight, I started working here.
Okay. And were you born in Birmingham?
St. Vincent’s Hospital on Southside.
Kathy Koutroulakis: No, Hon! South Highland, Honey!
Okay.
South High—excuse me—South Highland Infirmary. That’s where I was born at.
And what year were you born? If I may ask.
Nineteen twenty-nine.
------
So are you a first generation born in Birmingham?
Yes, ma’am.
And where in Greece is your family from?
Right outside of Sparta. A little town in the—little town—little south of Sparta named Sykea [Gus pronounces this See-key-ah. On a map the town is Sikea] S-Y-K-E-A. Sykea in Greek is “Figville.” I mean, in English. See, in Greek it’s Sykea and—
------
And do you like the hot dog business?
Well, it’s—yeah. It’s all right. It’s been—work like heck. I’ve been here for [sound of cash register], you know, ever since forty-eight.
And you’re open—are you open every day?
Yes, ma’am.
------
I’ve got—I’ve got five generation people come in here, ma’am…Some people that come in here, they used to set them on the—on the counter. They were knee-high to a duck.
Just sit in here. Now they were children, they bring their children and—
KK: Sit them up on the counter.
--grandchildren and do the same thing. You know, that’s a big thing for a little kid, to sit on the counter.
------
Any stories that stand out?
Well, there are so many of them. Heck, I can’t—you know, it’s hard to tell. You know, it’s hard to—got a lot of stuff going on in here. Shoot, I tell you, when my Uncle Pete was here—well, heck. It wasn’t nothing. He had to—there for a while, he had—he had ex-convicts in here. They get out of prison, they come in here and go to work. Four or five of them, they worked for a while. Pretty rough around here back then though.
------
Well how has business affected you—that change over the years?
Well, it affected me a little bit. I mean, when people come to town, I get my share of them. I get my share of business. But when nobody’s in town—of course, I still—I still do business but not like—you know. [Short pause] But, uh, that’s the way it is. You know, it’s a lot of these people, during the holidays I—you know, like Thanksgiving, Christmas—when people come to visit their, you know, their kinfolks, well they’ll come—they’ll come by here, they bring all of them—bring the family in. That way I—I get—like last Saturday a man came in here. He—he celebrates his—his daddy’s birthday. Every year they come in here. There was three of them come in here, and they spent eighty dollars in here. Eighty-three, I think. Eighty-three or eighty-four dollars. They ate all those hot dogs and carried a bunch of them with them. They’re from north Alabama and—from Florence, I think. Somewhere up there.
------
Do you have a philosophy of hot dog making?
What do you mean? I—I just—
I don’t know—
I just give them quality and service. That’s—
Yeah?
--all. That’s all that will make this—you know. That--that will make any—any business, you know.
------
How do you prepare a hot dog? How do you serve it?…What’s your style?
Oh, my style? I don’t know. Just pick up a hot dog, put it together…Mustard, onions, kraut and sauce.
Okay. And the sauce is—
What do you mean? You know, we just, uh—you know, I just, uh—sauce, like—it ain’t chili. It’s regular.
Well, what’s in it?
Well quite—everything—I got quite a few ingredients in there.
It’s a regular sauce with everything in it? [Laughs]
Yes, ma’am. Well it’s gut, uh—I’ve got about—let’s see, four---about fifteen different ingredients in it. And like, uh—
Is there anything Greek about it? The sauce?
Anything Greek?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, me, I guess!
[Laughs]
I don’t know.
So how is it that there are so many hot dog places around here, and they seem to all be run by—
Because this—
--Greeks?
Because of this place.
Yeah?
That’s right.
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Do you eat hot dogs?
One every day. I just got through eating one about a half-hour ago.
Yeah? What do you put on yours?
Well, different things. My, uh—my taste now is onions, a little bit of kre—you know, everything but mustard.
Okay. GK; I’ve got—you know, I can eat most of it, but I don’t—you know, I prefer not to.
------
Well how did this place end up in this tiny little walk—walk-up?
Lady, you got me! This place has been here since--like I told you—it’s been here, I’d say, about, uh, nineteen ten to twelve. Something like that. Seriously!
Yeah.
Before the First World War. So the First World War was nineteen fourteen, so it had to be, you know, before the First World War. So I’d say about—
Do you know—
--ten to twelve.
Do you know when that neon sign went up outside?
Yes, ma’am. [Short pause] Went up nineteen forty-six. I was here when they put it up.
Yeah?
Yeah, I was—I was here when my Uncle Pete, he [short pause]—that—that sign cost five hundred dollars to put up there. When my Uncle Pete bought this place by himself—he had a partner when he came in [Gus Cumbageorge (Gus isn’t sure of the spelling of his last name)]. Bought his partner out in nineteen forty-six, I think. And after he bought it out, he went up there to the real estate people and told them if—if you give me a ten year straight lease, I’ll remodel the place. This place was nothing like it—well, it was something like that. It—and he, uh—and so they gave him a ten year lease, so he fixed it like that. It was-- see, before that—before that he had two little old doors like a saloon. You know, your swinging doors?
------
[The] Greek history here…it goes back a long way—
Oh, yeah.
--and everybody seems to be connected.
Yeah, well that, uh—you know, when my f--father first came here, the Greeks owned just about all the business here. Beer business, the bakery business, the restaurant business, of course. And produce business. My daddy was in the produce business, and he—he used to—they used to sell seven and eight boxcars of fruit every day, he told me. He—they wouldn’t even take them off the boxcar. They’d sell them direct—direct out of the boxcars because they had nothing but fruit stands around the corner, and all the Greeks had the fruit stands.
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Um, well what was it you were saying to that customer about the—the hot dogs taste different if you don’t eat them in here?
Well they—they do. I mean, it’s something—something about them. I mean, you can take a hot dog and wrap it up and put it in a sack, and go out there and eat it. It doesn’t taste the same as it does when it’s in here. This preacher s—s—said it’s something in these walls that, you know—that makes it taste like that. And that’s true.
------
So have you been back to Greece.
Oh, yeah. I’ve been about—I was—I’ve been to Greece—I’ve been to Greece twice: nineteen—nineteen sixty-five and nineteen ninety-five. Oh, you know, nineteen sixty-five my—all my aunts and uncles were living—most of them. But you know, the last time I went, my cousins—you know, I’m not—I wasn’t too close with them.
Do you have children here?
No, ma’am. I don’t have them—I don’t have nay children. [Short pause] Just my wife and I, that’s all.
Yeah. Do you have someone lined up to take over Pete’s Famous when you retire?
No, when I leave here, this place will be gone.
Yeah?
Because I’m the last one in here, according to the health department, and I might not be here then. They—they give me an ultimatum. I got to do a lot of work in here. They give me ‘til April to do it. I mean, not April but August to do it. If I don’t get it done, they will not issue me a health permit they told me…So I’m in the process of doing what they tell me to do, and then we’ll go from there.
------
It’s now Tuesday, March ninth two thousand and four. And I’m back with Gus Koutroulakis at Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs. And I just had a few more questions for you. After our interview yesterday, you got so busy. Um, and one of them is, um, you said your father was in the fruit business.
Yeah, he was in the produce business.
And what was his name?
George Koutroulakis.
And when did he come to Birmingham?
I think it was in, uh, nineteen-o-seven, I think. I’m—I’m almost positive.
Okay, and did he—
Nineteen-o-seven and then he [sound of hand hitting counter] came over here when he was thirteen years old, and he wound up on Morris Avenue for sixty-five years.
My goodness. Did he start out with a fruit stand?
Yes, ma’am. No, not fruit--he was in the fruit—in the wholesale fruit business…And he stayed there for sixty-five years until he retired.
What was the name of the business?
He had two or three names. First—first it was Derzis and Pappageorge, then it was Greek-American Produce [the two companies merged]. Both of them folded—all of them folded. And then, during—during the—during the Depression he--he was in s—you know, he was in another kind of business, then he went back into produce business and stayed there until--until he retired.
Okay. And then your Uncle Pete, when did he come here?
He bought this place in—the story goes, my uncle Pete used to love to play Pinochle.
Pinochle? Okay.
Yeah, so he was working in the sandwich shop—and that—he had a pretty good—he had a good weekend playing Pinochle, [sound of door opening] and he won three hundred dollars, and he and another man bought this place for six hundred dollars. Back in September of nineteen thirty-nine, I think. And then they had three months lease on it. And then he—then he stayed with it—he stayed with this man until--they were partners until nineteen forty-five, I think. Forty-five or forty-six and he bought his partner out. They--you know, they couldn’t hardly get along, so he—one of them had to buy the other one out, so my Uncle Pete bought him out. And a year later he changed the name to Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs [Gus believes the original name of the hot dog stand was Louis’s Place].
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And yesterday you were kind of shy about your sauce, but that’s a Birmingham thing.
What do you mean, I was shy?
You weren’t telling me much about it.
Oh.
[Laughs]
Well what do you want to know about it.
I don’t know, it just seems a really local tradition and so I wonder—maybe how it came about or what your secret is or—
Well, my—
Miss Kathy was telling me that she and her ex-husband [John Skaran] had the Hot Dog King, and her sauce that she made over there was a little sweeter than yours. [To Kathy] Did I get that right?
Yeah, well see my—I don’t know about hers, but I know my uncle—see back then there was a lot of—my uncle was a bachelor and—and they had a lot of Greek restaurants, and all of them were friends. And this--these guys would—these guys would come by there, and then after they’d close up, well a lot of them would sit back there [points towards the back of the place] and [short pause] and put a case--hot dog case—put a case of hot dogs—empty case on the counter, and they’d open up a fifth of whiskey and sit and drink half the night. And you know, and talk and all that. You know, how they did it. You know. Anyway, and so one of them would say, “You ought to add this, and you ought to subtract that, and you ought to add--” So he, more or less—basically, all of them the same. But you know, these guys—you know, everybody would give, you know, tell them to do this and he ought to—you know—so he came up with a form—you know, with this formula he’s got here.
And you’re making the same sauce that your Uncle Pete made?
Basically, yes, ma’am.
Yeah.
I might vary it a little bit. Maybe there’s a couple of –one or two ingredients that he normally would have put in there, I don’t put in there.
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Were you doing anything before you started working here?
Yeah, I was working with my daddy over on Morris Avenue, in the produce place…I was working in the morning, and I—eleven—about eleven o’clock I’d come here and help my uncle through the rush…And then when my daddy—my uncle Pete had a heart attack and, uh, he told me to come down here and go in to work. And see, back then [sound of cash register] you know—you know, when your parents tell you something, well you didn’t—you didn’t have to write you a thesis about it.
Yeah.
See?
[Laughs]
You just say, “Okay, that’s it.”
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