Sego 'Comes to Play' at Namesake Cafe

Go ahead. Order anything. Morton Grove restaurateur Violet Sego bets she can whip it up for you.

"If I don't have something, I'll cook what a customer wants," she said from a faded green booth within her Dempster Street eatery one March morning."I can really cook anything."

Exhibit A: A regular customer she gleefully refers to as "Stan Man."

He bustles into the dining room and voices his hankering for a hearty sandwich. It's still 10 a.m., but Sego immediately obliges. She cranes her neck over the booth and checks on the clanking and sizzling and rumbling kitchen behind her.

"We've got lunch specials, sure," Sego said. "They'll do it for you — you know that."

Stan Man beams, and perhaps the endearing scene illustrates the quaint lure Violet's Cafe has cultivated for the past 16 years. Then again, Sego's original strategy envisioned her lounging poolside more than a decade ago. 

"My vision was [to] work five years, make lots of money and retire," she said. "It didn't happen. Well, I love what I'm doing, but I didn't have enough money."

So, naturally, she continued cooking. She cooked a little bit of French. A little bit of Italian. Made-to-order skillets. Schnitzel with eggs. Chili and eggs. Pickle soup. And, of course, her signature item, "the best biscuits and gravy — anywhere."

"Not everybody would serve what I serve for breakfast," Sego said.

The eclectic fare is certainly a departure from her previous ventures, which include Mecca in Chicago's Edison Park and Mecca West in Cicero. Sego said she sold off the latter after her marriage to her ex-husband fizzled and she yearned for an avenue to continue cooking but be home for her then-three-year-old daughter by 3 p.m.

Still, she believes, especially in light of Women's History Month, that she was able to overcome that business split with a fierce independence.

"I don't see, for me, any obstacles," Sego said. "I do what I like to do. I don't depend on any man, so I really don't think there's many obstacles for me. For probably other women, there is. I have no problems."

Well, does she have one problem: On this particular dreary weekday morning, Sego cannot complete a full thought without a habitual diner interrupting her. A brusque elderly man impatiently taps her shoulder as she begins to discuss her daily motivation.

"I'll be with you in a minute, Ken," she said, quickly returning to her previous point — why, despite overseeing a business she thought would have garnered her a fortune a decade ago, she still ties her apron as the first coffee pot hisses and bubbles everyday. "I come here to play. I come here every day to play. I have fun every day."

Sego then shot the clanking and sizzling and rumbling kitchen behind her a prideful, satisfied look.