Norb Feltes, 84, has a long history with his home town of Aurora, where he grew up on a dairy farm.
“My family, who are from Germany and Luxembourg, came here in 1855, and I grew up on the northeast side of Aurora about a mile from the Fox River,” Feltes said. “I love Aurora, although it has changed a lot as a community.”
Feltes and others like him were celebrated Friday night through a taste of Aurora’s culinary history as the Aurora Historical Society presented “History on a Fork” – a multi-cultural food and drink tour based on nearly a dozen nationalities who have all contributed to the development of Aurora.
Guests who came to the spring fundraiser for the Historical Society enjoyed unique dishes ranging from bouneschlupp – a traditional soup from Luxembourg made with green beans, potatoes, bacon, and onions — to a traditional Christmas shrimp stew from southern Mexico known as “romeritos con camaron.”
“We got a few things like garlic sausage that was made by the parishioners of St. George Romanian Catholic Parish in Aurora, but for the most part, we reached out to chefs in the area and asked them cook authentic things they knew that most people wouldn’t find on a menu,” said Mary Clark Ormond, president of the Aurora Historical Society, who also organized the event.
Ormond said there were dishes representing German, Greek, Italian, Irish, Indian, African American, Puerto Rican and Jewish communities. She said a lot of the food at the event came from immigrants dealing with poverty.
“When immigrants first came here many of them were poor and there was not a lot of meat, and so you saw dishes made from things like rice and pasta and beans which you could stretch,” she said. “We wanted to focus on the groups that came here and had the strongest history – the people that stayed and built the groceries and stores and taverns and social clubs.”
A long-standing business in the community, Prisco’s Family Market, contributed the classic pasta e fagioli – a pasta and bean soup that Jacquie Guzauskas, sister of president and co-owner Andy Guzauskas, said “has been in the family for about 100 years.”
“This is a recipe we got from Grandma Prisco and it’s a popular, hearty dish that has your pasta and beans and tomatoes,” Jacquie Guzauskas explained. “We wanted to bring this along with our family recipe for garlic bread, which is one of the more popular items in our store.”
Aurora’s Dave Mertz was another dinner guest who also made a contribution by bringing some bottles of homemade beer – a rauchweizen – which he said was made from wheat that had been smoked.
“I’m a DIY guy and have been making my own beer for about 15 years now,” Mertz said. “I probably brew about 150 gallons a year and I think it’s cheaper than paying $10 or more for the same amount made by someone else. I like that we’re celebrating various cultures here.”
Diners’ reactions were mixed regarding how adventurous they planned to be with dishes unfamiliar to them.
Sue Beck of Batavia said she was willing to try a few things but probably couldn’t avoid asking those magic words: “‘What’s in it?’ is definitely something that’s bound to come up,” Beck said. “I’ll probably wind up having something that’s amazingly good and am better off not knowing what it is made of.”
Aurora resident Greg Probst, who also serves as a board member for the Historical Society, said he planned “to dive right in.”
“For me, this is a way to honor those who go way back and were the pioneers of Aurora and I’m looking forward to trying a lot of things,” he said. “I’m not scared of something based on the name alone. I’m using my nose first and I’ll deal with what the ingredients are later.”
Ormond said the fundraising event also served as a kick-off for a summer art exhibit that will feature work taken from the Historical Society’s archives featuring ethnic diversity.
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.