Salukis in Business
Lisa Pangburn-Fenton — Owner, Mama Pang, and Mama Pang at PK’s — ’98, Journalism; College of Mass Communication and Media Arts
What’s in a nickname? For SIU Alumni Lisa Pangburn-Fenton (’98), or “Mama Pang,” as she is affectionately known, it’s a mix of history, marketing and love.
Currently owner of the “Mama Pang” brand, and head chef at local Carbondale watering hole, PK’s, Pangburn-Fenton came to SIU Carbondale on a scholarship as a theater major, but ultimately changed her major to journalism. She’s also a legacy, as her father, mother and brother all attended SIU Carbondale.
Pangburn-Fenton earned her moniker “Mama Pang,” in the late 1990s while representing musicians for Reception Records, the vanity label for Noteworthy Studios. Noteworthy, an audio company that recorded and presses CDs for bands in the local Carbondale music scene, “poached” Pangburn-Fenton during her senior year at SIU.
“I had been working for the Daily Egyptian for a few years, and had finally ended up as their entertainment editor, when Kevin Graham, who was one of the owners of Noteworthy at the time, approached me about repping some of our local bands in the music scene outside of Carbondale,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
Pangburn-Fenton said it was a total match, and while she started off as their “Girl Friday,” she ended up on the road with several different bands, most notably the Wax Dolls, The Bottletones and the MoJoDeans. She got them gigs (and made sure they showed up to them) in places like Chicago’s House of Blues, where all three bands once performed for an SIU night.
“The name Mama Pang came from the position I was in managing those bands, especially from the Wax Dolls. There was a lot of “you need to go to bed/ drink more water/ take a shower/tune your guitar/ please eat something/get off the phone/ etc., so the name just evolved naturally out of my constant prodding” Pangburn-Fenton said.
But after several years of band wrangling, travel, writing press releases, copy, and everything that comes with promotions, Noteworthy morphed from its musical roots and into a graphic design company, and Pangburn-Fenton went in another direction.
“I had gotten married, and my husband, Josh, and I were thinking about starting a family, and so it made sense for me to get job that had hours which would support that lifestyle,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
So, for the next 10 years Pangburn-Fenton worked for Southern Illinois Healthcare, beginning as a receptionist and ending up as a liaison between the physicians and the patients at the Breast Center. But after her son, Mac, was born in 2008, she began to reevaluate her situation.
“For me, the work I did was rewarding, but emotionally draining. Miracles happened constantly there, but so did tragedies, and those added up for me. Honestly, I left because I felt I wasn’t a very good mom because I worked constantly. I wanted to have more time to be with Mac while he was still little,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
So, like many people in her situation, Pangburn-Fenton asked herself what she would prefer doing.
“And I thought, well, I like to cook, and I’d been told I was pretty good at it, so I started to look around for a job where they’d pay me to do that. Remarkably, SIU was looking for extra-help positions in their kitchens, and so I leapt into that and have never looked back,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
While working part-time for SIU, Pangburn-Fenton also began making breads, jams, canned goods, soup mixes and other food items to sell at the DeSoto farmer’s market. She took catering jobs, officially branded her business “Mama Pang,” and slowly began to develop a following.
At the same time, back at SIU Carbondale, Pangburn-Fenton walked deeper into the kitchens.
“When you are extra help you get the truly rough jobs in the kitchen. You work the dish room. You’re on the fryers, and you clean up after the chefs. But I loved it. As soon as a post opened up for kitchen helper, I tested for it and I passed. And then I decided I wanted to be first cook, and tested for that and passed,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
Sadly, as the State of Illinois’ budget crisis deepened, Pangburn-Fenton, who was just out of her probationary period for first cook, came back from spring break to find she had been laid off.
“Of course, you ask yourself if there was anything you could have done differently to produce a different outcome, but it basically boiled down to timing. It was heartbreaking,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
But Pangburn-Fenton is not someone to sit idly by. So when the opportunity came up to cook for local watering hole, PK’s, whose owner and cook of 65 years, Gwen Hunt, passed away in 2018, she leapt at the chance.
“Gwen provided home-cooked, slow-food lunches during the week, and breakfasts on Saturdays, for her patrons for decades. I wanted to help keep that spirit alive. But it was a leap. I went from making Chicken-n-Dumplings on Sundays for a few months, to turning our meals made to order on a daily basis, for the public, in Gwen’s kitchen. But that’s my jam. I love the high that comes from meeting a rush and doing it impeccably,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
Pangburn-Fenton said PK’s is the perfect place for her to do it.
“I had so much help in the beginning. Without Curtis Conley (PK’s manager) or my assistants, James Hinkle and Peter Rogalla, I’m not sure I would have gotten this far. But we’ve increased the daytime business — doctors come in from the hospital, business owners are calling in and doing pick-ups, and we see people from the city and SIU regularly, so we are succeeding,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
Pangburn-Fenton has brought many new offerings to PK’s, but has made sure to hold on to a few staples.
“In addition to lunch and Saturday breakfast, we’ve done things like a mac-n-cheese day, tapas nights, and a Taco bar, but we serve soup and sandwiches on what we’ve come to call Gwensdays (Wednesdays), and we serve burgers and homemade soups Tuesday through Friday every week,” Pangburn-Fenton said.
The rest of her menu is “Midwestern comfort food made in small batches with big taste.” She changes her menus out seasonally, and nothing comes from pouches or cubes. It’s all slow-cooked and “hand crafted with love.”
This coming Thursday, Pangburn-Fenton will be dishing up “Christmas in July,” featuring her famous Chicken-n-Dumplings and “other Christmas-themed menu items,” so if you’re in town for the Bottletones Sunset Concert, fortify yourself first by stopping in for lunch between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Mama Pang at PK’s is open Tuesday through Friday for lunch, and the same hours for breakfast on Saturdays. For more information please visit her Facebook or Instagram pages.
“Salukis in Business” celebrates the our Saluki Alumni who have taken the risk to go into business for themselves. If you’d like to be the focus of this weekly feature, or nominate someone you think we should feature, please email us at alumni-socialmedia@alumni.siu.edu.
