Summer road trippers visiting southeast Kansas might notice a curious sight: Two billboards for similarly named fried chicken restaurants that are nearly next door to each other.
Chicken Mary’s and Chicken Annie’s have been staples in Pittsburg for more than 80 years. They share a friendly rivalry and a connection to the now-defunct coal mining industry. The women started both restaurants after turning to cooking to support their families during a time when they had few other options.
Donna Lipoglav is the owner of Chicken Annie’s. She’s also the granddaughter of Chicken Annie’s founder, Annie Pichler, who started in 1933 when this area had a booming coal mining industry.
“My grandfather was in a mine accident and lost his leg and couldn’t work anymore,” Lipoglav said. “So what she started doing was selling chicken dinners out of her house to the local miners.”
LESS THAN a stone’s throw away is Chicken Mary’s, which had similar origins nearly 10 years later, in 1942. Mary Zerngast’s husband, Joe, had a heart attack while working in the coal mines, as Lana Brooks explains. She was a manager at Chicken Mary’s for 40 years.
“Back in the day, women didn’t work, so the only thing they knew was housekeeping and cooking,” Brooks said. “She thought she did a pretty good chicken, so she started serving the miners and their families out of her house, serving fried chicken.”
Brooks started as a server and eventually worked her way up. She got the job because her mom wouldn’t buy her a pair of crushed velvet pants.
“So I went and got a job,” Brooks said. “She didn’t think I’d get one that quick. And I ended up buying a crushed velvet pair of pants.”
There have been rumors swirling around about the two restaurants for decades. The first one is that sisters founded them.
But really, they were just two women who turned to cooking for money after their husbands had health problems or accidents in the mining industry and could no longer work. And the two women happened to live close to each other.
Lipoglav said she still hears a rumor at Chicken Annie’s that the two restaurants came from a family squabble.
“Everybody thinks they’re sisters and they had a fight,” Lipoglav said.
ANOTHER RUMOR is that they’re heated rivals, which would make sense considering you can literally see both restaurants at the same time. But that rumor was dramatized and bolstered by a 2010 feature on the Travel Network show Food Wars. It was the third episode in the show’s first and only season.
It portrayed a dramatic version of the rivalry — complete with two chicken mascots wrestling with chicken clucks in the background. It featured two teams with “Team Chicken Mary’s” or “Team Chicken Mary’s” posters meeting in the middle like rival sports teams.
A blindfolded taste test judged each restaurant’s chicken legs. Chicken Mary’s was crowned the winner, but Brooks said both restaurants won that day. And frankly, comparing the two restaurants helps drive sales.
She said people still come in and get chicken legs from each restaurant to do their own competition.
