He was Chicago’s Fighting Hebrew, from the Kraków family of fishmongers
on Maxwell Street, who clubbed and dazed the great Dempsey, who rammed
his head in the chest of the giant Carnera, who swung so hard he spun around, 
who wore his shoes on the wrong feet in the ring, who heard the Yiddish curses 
of his sister the manager leaping in the first row, who smiled for the newsreel 
cameras with fewer and fewer teeth, who married a stripper, who coiled his 
right hand in a fighter’s pose on the cover of The Ring magazine, who filled 
stadiums with the clamor of refugees and worshippers from synagogues.

Please don’t let him hit me again, pleaded the King to the referee, squatting on 
the bottom rope in the stadium where the White Sox threw the World Series, 
the lights above the ring spinning two minutes into the first round, after 
the hands of Joe Louis burned the grid in the brain of the King, who stumbled 
face first to the canvas, the fighter dissolving into a fishmonger. The reporters
called him a coward, a deserter fleeing from the trenches to the firing squad.
Thirty years later, Union County College declared April 4th King Levinsky Day, 
and a Loser’s Fund of twenty dollars for a student with holes in his pockets.

When he quit the ring, the King sold ties, navy blue with a sprinkle of white
flowers, the name King Levinsky and a boxing ring emblazoned on the label.
He worked the tables at lunchtime in Chicago. Do you remember when I fought 
Joe Louis? the patter began. Neither do I. The King would brandish shears
to snip off a customer’s tie, then pick out a new one from his suitcase. 
Matches real good, he would say. He worked the crowds at the fights,
and the mobsters who always bet on the winner paid fifty bucks a tie.
When his sister died, he cried in a phone booth: I ain’t the King no more.

I worked in the stockroom at Sears with a middleweight who could have been
the bastard son of King Levinsky. Herbie Wilens, called The Hebrew Hitter, 
would hit me, sparring bare-knuckled to mesmerize the boys in the stockroom, 
the janitor glancing up from his mail order bride magazine. I was a boy who 
drank cough syrup from the bottle, too slow to duck the right hand that 
lit a match in my ear again and again, the heat spreading across my face.
Don’t kill him, said the janitor. Herbie stopped hitting me and hit boxes instead,
the boom of his hands crushing the cardboard where a bicycle or lawnmower
waited for Christmas. I was a poet, so I would write a three-word poem 
under every dent left by the hands of The Hebrew Hitter: Herbie Was Here.

Herbie would roar at the odes I inscribed to praise him on dented
cardboard boxes. We split twelve packs of Budweiser in his basement,
though I grimaced at the foam surging in my belly. We inhaled bong hits 
on his couch, though the bubbling smoke of the bong seared my throat.
I imagined my uvula, that little punching bag, bright red, the skin peeled
away, as I wailed with Jimi Hendrix singing All Along the Watchtower.
I told Herbie about the girl I kissed, how she hid me in her bedroom closet 
till her Old Testament father shuffled to sleep, how I wrote her a poem 
where she swam in a waterfall, how she dropped me and kept the poem.
Herbie told me about his father the brawler, swinging and skinning his knees 
on the sidewalk. He told me about sparring the Mexican middleweight who 
scorched his ribs, ranked number ten in the world. Leo hits so hard, he’d say. 
The Hebrew Hitter trained on Budweiser and bong hits with me all night.

Later, The Ring would call him inept Herbie Wilens of Gaithersburg, Maryland. 
A Puerto Rican fighter from Jersey City, who would become the champion
of the world, later a security guard grateful to Jesus, strafed Herbie with hooks
and uppercuts till he stayed on his stool, chest heaving. At the Budweiser
Washington Championship Boxing Games, signed by the matchmaker to lose,
walking to the ring in his robe with the Star of David, he remembered the right 
that would spank my face till I glowed red as the light blinking on a ring post, 
and Sugar Ray Leonard’s older brother, Roger the Dodger, sprawled across 
the mat. The crowd cheered the loser when he lost the split decision.

The days of sparring in the stockroom gone, the other stockboys buried
in the dumpster of my imagination, I dug for Herbie and found the body:
dead at fifty-five, cancer, the obituary listing the funeral home to visit years
after visiting hours were over, and his nickname nowhere on the record.
The Hebrew Hitter could have been the bastard son of King Levinsky, 
even if he never sold me a tie in navy blue sprinkled with white flowers.
There was beer and weed on the couch, Hendrix in my blasted ear, the poem 
of waterfalls where I drowned at sixteen. I carved the words Herbie Was Here 
on every cardboard box dented by his hands, and he would roar like a fighter 
on the cover of The Ring magazine, middleweight champion of the stockroom.

Open today, Regards to Edith draws on Maxwell Street history and culture

Author Ira Berkow, who wrote “Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar” in 1977, referred to the historic Chicago market as “the Ellis Island of the Midwest.” Aiming to celebrate that immigrant tradition, Heisler Hospitality opens Regards to Edith tonight.

But what’s with the name?

The inspiration for the West Loop restaurant came on the type of an evening familiar to many night owls: hours in front of a computer, watching one random video after another, before finding internet gold.

That’s what happened to Matt Eisler, co-owner of Heisler Hospitality. Eisler stumbled into an online rabbit hole one day, happening upon the story of a man from Maxwell Street named King Levinsky. Born Harris Krakow, Levinsky worked at his family’s Maxwell Street fish market by day but was a heavyweight boxer by night. During the 1930s, Levinksy earned a large following because he was an entertaining and gregarious fighter, said Eisler, who became fascinated by the boxer’s “colorful little world.”

As Eisler searched for Levinsky memorabilia, he found an authentic autographed photo on eBay, with a note that read, “Regards to Edith, King Levinsky.” For months, the photograph sat on his desk. As Eisler thought more about who Edith was, he realized that it was the perfect name for the restaurant.

“The restaurant is really not about one person, it’s about the opposite, the aggregate of a community and everything that Edith represents,” Eisler said.

“What better name to represent something, not in specific terms, but allowed us to craft this warm identity without having to pigeonhole (us) with one specific person or culture or specific type of food.”

The menu, created by executive chef Jared Wentworth, is informed by old menus, personal experiences and contemporary techniques. The first section of the menu is titled “brown bag,” which Wentworth describes as “playful takes on classic Maxwell Street food,” such as the pork chop sandwich, pizza puff and cheese fries.

Seasonal items are contemporary takes on food people ate during Levinsky’s time, when they went home or to restaurants for dinner. The restaurant’s supper platters, meant to be shared between two to four people, are also influenced by the meals that the diverse residents of Maxwell Street would dine on: chicken Vesuvio, gyro-spiced rack of lamb, and a one-pot seafood stew of Maine lobster, head-on shrimp and littleneck clams floated in saffron lobster broth.

“To me, if everyone’s grandparents were a little better of a cook, that’s what these would look like,” Wentworth said.

He’s excited about the matzo ball soup, “which is neither a floater or a sinker,” said Wentworth, referencing the dumpling’s buoyancy. He hopes that these traditional dishes can be elevated with careful methodology and technique — like rendering foie gras schmaltz and garnishing with Burgundy truffle, in the case of the matzo ball soup.

The opening of Regards to Edith comes on the heels of a Heisler property opening (neighboring Prairie School, for which Wentworth also curates the menu) and closing (Trench in Wicker Park). Regarding Trench’s closing eight months after a hyped revamp, Wentworth is only looking forward.

“I can’t wait to get (Regards to Edith) open and be cooking for people, and not hear construction noises,” he joked.