Lent Week #3: St. Paul the Apostle.

I want to take a moment to give some advice to anyone planning a Fish Fry, or any other charity fundraiser that serves food and potentially serves it to people who are unfamiliar with your venue and or your system. Please be generous in your signage!

We have visited several Fish Fry’s both this year and last that had poor signage. On more than one occasion we searched around large multi building facilities trying to find where the Fish Fry is located. We have also wandered through buildings searching for the dining area. You can follow your nose, but this sometimes leads you out back where they are frying the fish.

Finally, your Menu should be readily available both at the table you pay, and at the place you get your food.

This Friday on the third week of Lent Z and I, and our wayward Catholic friend Beth, went to St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Westerville. Thom and Fe were away on spring break, so this week it was just the girls. I brought up the suggestions about signage because of our visit here, but St. Paul’s is not the first Church where we have experienced this.

We arrived at their huge complex on State Street that contains what looks likes two Churches and a school. Despite the lack of signage on the outside of the buildings we were able to spot the school cafeteria from the outside and people mingling around. This was our clue and we ventured in.

We were in luck. Our dinners were $7 for adults and $4 for children 12 and under. Bargain hunters note: this was the lowest price so far this year.

After we paid ,we received our color coded tickets and a small orange traffic cone. We found a place at one of the tables and put the cone on our table. After just a few minutes of waiting a nice man from the Knights of Columbus came around and took our order.

The adults had the option of fried fish, baked fish, or macaroni and cheese for our entree and French fries, scalloped potatoes, or macaroni and cheese as side dish. There was optional coleslaw or apple sauce, and white roll or wheat. Drinks were also included and were served yourself.

This is another situation where they could have printed out menus and either posted them on the wall or had them on the table. It would have made it much easier of us and for our “waiter”. The only difference between our menu and Z’s was that she was not able to order baked fish.

Also if you were paying close attention you may have noticed you are able to order macaroni and cheese with a side dish of macaroni and cheese!

We all ordered fried fish and let me first say that it was both hot and yummy. My side dish was scalloped potatoes and coleslaw, Z had the macaroni and cheese and apple sauce and Beth had the scalloped potatoes and coleslaw.

I apologize that we didn’t order the French fries. I will tell you that they looked good and if the fish was any example their fried food was very good. The scalloped potatoes were tasty and Z gave the macaroni and cheese a thumbs up.

Z’s best quote of the evening was that our rolls tasted like communion bread. The amazing thing is that she was right, at least compared to our church.

Desserts were an extra dollar and once again homemade. Z had “dirt” in a cup which made her very happy and I had a nice piece of cake.

Our little group enjoyed our evening and our only complaint would be the poor information sharing. Again, something to keep in mind if you are planning your own fish fry.

Let us know if you have a great Fish Fry to wow us with!

Our Lady of Victory-Marblecliff

Loyal Readers: I am sorry for the delay this week. Being a single parent last week kept me busy and distracted. Fear not though here is Fish Fry week two.

Our party was down to three this week due to a minor bug that had Z down for the count last Friday. So it was up to Thom, F and I to venture out to Our Lady of Victory in Upper Arlington. Due to the Buckeye basketball game we started a bit later just to confirm our Buckeyes had a decisive lead, then checked on Z, took her carry out order and headed out into the rain.

If you are looking for scenery, give Our Lady of Victory two thumbs up. It is nestled in Marble Cliff one of the more beautiful neighborhoods in Columbus. Lots of big trees and winding roads with a bit of a hill, such as we have in Central Ohio, surround the area. I imagine it will be even more beautiful when spring gets a little more established here in Columbus.

We lined up with the crowd at the entrance and paid for our four meals, three to eat in and one to carry out. Adults were $9 each and kids, 12 and under, were $5 which covered everything. There was no family discount.

The main attraction is the FRESH LAKE ERIE PERCH! Ok, yes, I grew up on Lake Erie and am a bit partial. That said, I didn’t love the breading, but both boys did, and the couple we shared our table with were regulars, so clearly it must be a taste thing. This mother and son pair also told us that the church has it brought in fresh every Friday.

There is also the ever present coleslaw, steak fries and bake potatoes. They will get credit too for offering salad and rice as options. Bread with butter too. And for all you fans, Grandview’s own, Rotollo’s Pizza is an option for the kids meals.

I enjoyed my baked potato, especially since they had sour cream after our first week’s experience. F thought the fries were too salty but good. We should also note that our family is not big steak fry fans, so French fries would always make us happier.

Desserts were clearly homemade which is a plus as far as I am concerned, and our mint chocolate bundt cake was a hit at our table.

Sodas and water are included. Beer and wine are available for a donation.

We brought a carry-out meal home to Z. We aren’t sure if it was because of the lateness of the hour or because it was carry-out but she was given four pieces of fish instead of our three. The food transported well enough, but I’m not sure that anything fried is as good once it has cooled off. Even so, she gave her dinner a thumbs up.

Coming soon, our review of St. Paul’s in Westerville.

Plus, we’ve added share buttons to make sharing this blog with your friends even easier.

2011: First week of Lent- St. Patricks, Downtown Columbus

Lent begins again and the intrepid Mak family is off in search of Columbus’s best Catholic Fish Fry.  Our hope this year is to visit new locations and explore new offerings.

 

If  you are considering visiting any of our locations from last year, we would love to hear of any changes and updates.  We discussed over dinner what our favorite was from last year and we universally agreed that it was St. Michaels on High Street in Worthington.  In fact, it was the one that was requested for a return visit this year.

 Both the Mak-lings are entering that phase of adolescents where they have plans on the weekends that don’t involve their parents.  I include this as a ray of hope for my friends with younger children who feel like it is impossible to spend an evening alone with your spouse. Your day will come!  

The downfall of this is that we are now glorified chauffeurs doing the pick-up and drop-off all night long. Even with a busy Friday evening our dedication is to you, so our family of four ventured out early to St. Patrick Catholic Church at 280 N. Grant in Downtown Columbus.

Because our children’s busy schedules dictated, we were early birds and pulled into the parking lot at 5pm. The lot was filled with teenagers getting ready for an event, happily joshing and horsing around. We worked our way into what looked like a newer parish hall and found ourselves first in line.

Our dinner was a choice of two types of fish, fried or baked.  Each dinner had two pieces though you were not allowed to mix and match. All of us opted for fried, I think in honor of our first of the season.  Though, I did try and get one of each. There was also macaroni and cheese, coleslaw and two types of potatoes, baked and French fries.  Dessert was homemade brownies and cupcakes.  Drinks were sodas, water, and fruity punch as part of the dinner price or wine and beer for a $2.50 donation. Adult dinners were $9, kids 12 and under were $4 and there was a family deal for $30.

Probably because we were the first ones there and this was the first Fish Fry of the season, they were a bit disorganized but they quickly recovered and were able to sort out what color our ticket was supposed and what their portion control was we were quickly served with a smile. 

Along with our fish each of us had the mac and cheese. Thom and the kids had coleslaw and fries and I tried the baked potato.  The food was basic but generally tasty. The fish was hot and crispy, but F decided felt that it was “uniformed in shape and that kind of creeps me out.” The baked potato was good but they had only butter and oddly, cream cheese but not sour cream.  The French fries were proclaimed good but needed salt. Thom and the kids thought the mac and cheese was good and it was better than average but I thought it was only just above average. I will admit to being pretty picky about my mac and cheese. We all thought the brownies were great and Z claimed a coveted corner piece.  F thought his cupcake was good.

If our visit is an example of what to expect in the future I would suggest this for families with small kids you want to feed early since it was easy to get in and out and the portions were filling. The people were friendly and by the time we left to drop the kids off for their evenings of fun the room was filling up with families with small children.

Again, if you go to a fish fry, let us know what you think.  We need contributors, so feel free to chime in!

Bonus: Fish Fries Fijian Style

Guest Entry: The Lovo Pack


My family are not church-goers, but our Fijian nanny is, and recently we supported her church fundraiser by buying one of their freshly made, home delivered, 'lovo packs'.

First, I should explain that we live in Fiji and a lovo is the traditional Fijian earth oven. And second, I will admit, I would have bought a lovo pack from T, our nanny, even if it wasn't for her fundraiser, because lovo food, if you've never had the opportunity to eat it, is yummy. In fact, my husband's cousin's wife, J, actually makes and sells lovo packs, as a side gig to her catering business. Her’s are very tasty.

But, here I'll start with T's Orepi Original Pentecostal Church lovo pack, perhaps a Fijian equivalent to a Catholic church fundraising fish fry.

You have to book ahead, so that the lovo-makers know how much food to get and put into the ground to cook. So, a couple of days before, T asked me, "Hey, do you want a lovo pack for Thursday? $20. It's for my church. Here's the menu." She produced a little scrap paper with the list of what my FJ$20 (US$10) would buy me: 1 x Dalo (Translation: Taro), 1 x Palusami (Taro leaves layered with coconut milk, onion & garlic), 1 x Piece Fish, 1 x Vakasakera (no idea, see below), 1 x #14 Chicken, 2 x Kai (fresh water mussels), 2 x Cassava. Hmmmm. Ok. I'm in.

On Thursday morning, T said that her son was helping dig up the lovo at the Orepi Original Pentecostal church. They started at 8 am and it cooked for 2 hours. At about 4pm, some guys from the church dropped off the cardboard box, our lovo pack, to our house.

It wasn't hot, like straight out of an underground oven full of smokey rocks. In fact, we were the last to get our delivery, so the box was soggy. The other packs were delivered to office workers for their lunches that afternoon. Yet, I was still excited that this was going to be our not so warm dinner because the box smelled like your clothes do after sitting next to a campfire all night.

When my husband, T, came home, he was skeptical about my choice for dinner, "you know you can't trust these lovo packs. Sometimes those churches use frozen chickens, past their use-by date." Bleh! You will eat it because I didn't cook anything else.

I noted that the fish looked like it was over fried. That's because it wasn't cooked in the lovo at all, but instead fried separately. So, it was not remarkable. The chicken, while it's skin looked soggy and grey (It was in the ground for 2 hours, so maybe that's normal), it tasted nice, moist and smokey. No complaints from T either. I wasn't aware of the chicken numbering system until I got to Fiji, but a #14 chicken is a smallish one. It would probably only serve two adults if eaten without all the other goodies in our lovo pack.

The two fresh water mussels, or kai, looked like food-poison-in-a-half-shell. They were also not cooked in the ground, but fried or baked instead. T said I could have both of them, so I did. But they were very gritty in texture and tasted just plain odd. I quickly followed them with a Fiji Gold beer chaser. The dalo was as to be expected, dense, sweet yet smokey. The cassava, very dry, but maybe that is to be expected as well.

The palusami was very creamy and tasty, the perfect balance between onion, coconut milk and dalo leaves. Sometimes palusami, if the wrong type of dalo leaves are picked, can give your throat a razor blade itch, but luckily with this one I didn't feel any discomfort. It was just pure yumminess.

The absolute best was the vakasakera, which I hadn't tried before. I think it's best described as Fijian coleslaw. It's a mixture of thick coconut cream, kai, fish, clams (kaikoso) onion and a certain cabbage, finely chopped, that is called mosita in Fijian. It tasted fresh, crunchy, creamy and zingy all at once - lovely.

Our daughter, E, loved the dalo (the texture/taste is growing on her), forced down the palusami and vakasakera and she will always eat chicken, even if it was old, previously frozen and cooked in the ground.

The Orepi Original Pentecostal church lovo pack, while it was a little bit suspicious on delivery and presentation, was tasty, convenient and great value for money. We had enough lovo lunch leftovers for the next 2 days.

I must share though, that we all came down with a bad bout of gastro on Sunday, but we are attributing that to our walk with the puppy at the very dirty Suva waterfront on Saturday afternoon, but I'll spare you the details.

6th Week of Lent: St. Joan of Arc, Powell, OH

Once again, the gauntlet had been laid down! Did you know that there are two “Best” Fish Fries in Columbus? As we explored earlier, St. Margaret’s stakes that claim, but so does St. Joan of Arc in Powell.


For all of you “Amazing Race” watchers who were aghast when the racers were recently in France and had to find St. Joan of Arc’s statue, and had no idea she was a real person, take comfort in the fact that she is honored here in our own backyard. I wonder what the young French saint would think of Fish Fries? Though, if she was in favor of fund-raisers she would surely approve, because from what we can tell, the Fish Fry is an effective one.

We were joined once again by our Catholic friend B, as the four of us ventured up to Powell on Friday. Since the Buckeyes were playing at 7:00, we headed north on 315 early to beat the rush which turned out to be a good thing. The parking lot wasn’t too full at 5:30, but it filled up quickly once we were there.

St. Joan of Arc’s, like several of the other Churches we’ve visited, serves their Fish Fry as an all-you-can- eat buffet. Also, like several of the other churches, we were seated family style with other people at our big round table.

We found out that each week, a different group in the Church does the serving. The cooking though is done by the ever popular Knights of Columbus. Our dinner options were both baked and fried fish, French fries, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, green beans and the ever popular roll.

Perhaps it is because we were early, but St. Joan of Arc’s managed to get all of the food on their buffet at the right temperature, at least on our first try. I tried both the baked and fried fish as did B. T and Z had the macaroni and cheese with their fried fish and we all had the beans, fries and coleslaw.

Our first batch of fried fish was very good, and all of us gave it a “thumbs up”. While the baked fish was moist and did taste good it was not the best we had in our adventures. We all loved the fries and the coleslaw. The fries were hot and salty and the coleslaw was tangy and creamy. We all thought that they could have done a better job on the green beans.

Z, our macaroni and cheese critic, said it was OK, but not great. T was not so kind. He thought it tasted like pasta and paste.

We were also less than impressed with our second batch of fried fish. The batter failed to cling to the fish, perhaps a result of the high turn-over and cooking too quickly. Overall, it was very good and one of the best we had but I’m not sure any of our group would have rated it the “Best”.

Since this week is Holy week, this was our last Fish Fry for the year. This week we will have a special guest blogger from Fiji. There, the tradition is for churches to raise money with a Lovo, the Fijian version of the Luau. So, tune in next week, and have a happy Easter!

5th Week of Lent: St. Andrew's- Upper Arlington

I’ve mentioned that I grew up Lutheran.  I was always amazed by the big Catholic Church down the street in my home town.  I’m pretty sure we never went to any fish fries there.

There are lots of ways that churches can fundraise and feed the people. I know that my current church, Clinton Heights Lutheran, has a pasta dinner on Shrove Tuesday and a Pancake breakfast in the summer.  I have also seen signs for pasta dinners in front of the Methodist church on Broadway.

Lutherans are famous for is a good potluck supper, just ask Garrison Keillor. I am not suggesting that other churches can’t pull off good pot luck; I am just going by what I know.

 I have memories of heaving tables of food.  I grew up in communities with lots of Eastern Europeans.  So, there were not only deviled eggs,  myriad Jello salads, and green bean casserole, but cabbage rolls and goulash.

 I am pretty sure I have at one point or another tried every form of Jello and enjoyed most of them. Yes, I know that it isn’t vegetarian, so it is all a memory, but a fond one. I think the only one I didn’t like was carrots and raisins. But then I have never liked raisins.

I also remember these as wonderful feasts with lots of fellowship and children running around having fun. The only downfall being that my Father always insisted we go through the line together and as the minister he went through last.  That’s a sure way to miss out on the deviled eggs.

When we have visited the various Catholic Churches over the weeks I have seen this feeling of community there, too. It is good to see.  I think it is something that we should look for in our lives whenever we can.  It may be at church or school or your sports team, but it is good to sit down for a meal together, enjoy each other’s company and watch the children play.

This week we ventured over to Upper Arlington to St. Andrew’s on McCoy Rd. We were lured by the promises of salad.  It sounded a little healthier than your average fried fish fare.

 

My first suggestion for St. Andrew’s would be:  better signage. It was easy enough to find the church but once we were in the parking lot it was difficult to decide what door to go through.

Once we found it, we discovered yet another twist on how to serve a fish fry! The ladies at the door take your initial order, baked or fried or kids pizza, fish or macaroni and cheese. You then proceed to the cashier to pay and get your dessert and drink tickets.

The meal is served in a buffet style and they have figured out how to do that and keep it hot. It is not all you can eat, but the portions are large and should be filling for most people.  T and F both had fried fish with fries, coleslaw and F had green beans. Z went for the kid’s macaroni and cheese, fries, applesauce and salad. I had the baked fish, baked potato, and green beans. Warm rolls added to the starch factor.

The fried fish was very good. The baked fish, while flavorful, was tough. I thought the baked potato was great and the fries were just the way I liked them, hot and salty.  The others thought they were too salty.  Z thought the macaroni and cheese tasted good, but was too runny. The coleslaw was creamy and tangy.  The servings were large.

 If you grew up liking the canned green beans your school served like I did, you will love their green beans, too. As for the salad I was disappointed; iceberg lettuce and dressing.

This was the second church that we noted having milk as a drink option with both chocolate and white. Also, the desserts were all homemade and with lots of variety. Drinks and dessert were included in our dinner price.

The prices are $8 for adults and $4 for kids so our whole family ate for $28.

We have one more Friday for our review. I have ideas for blogging our family diner breakfasts and other adventures with our adolescents.  I am looking for ideas for a name….any suggestions?

4th Week of Lent: St. Margaret's of Cortona

It is a very bold statement to bill yourself as the “best” of something, but that is what St. Margaret’s of Cortona, on Hague Av, does at their Fish Fry with big, bold signs and T-shirts. This required our intrepid family of Fish Fry connoisseurs to investigate.

If numbers of people make you the best, they certainly have that in their favor. Because F and I were traveling this weekend we had an early dinner at St. Margaret’s. T. met the kids and I there and reported that patrons were wrapped around the building at 4:30! Police were there for crowd control.  At 5:00 we definitely hit the senior crowd and crowded it was. Their dining hall was stuffed to the gills (pun intended).

St. Margaret’s managed to put a new twist on how to serve a Fish Fry.  Once we entered and purchased our tickets we were sent off to find seats among the long a banquet tables. We worked our way through the crowds and staked out our four seats. Then we were told to wave our tickets in the air and one of the servers came to take our order.

Options for dinner were: fish, baked or fried, baked potatoes, French fries or steak fries, apple sauce or coleslaw and a roll. T, F and Z all had the fried fish and I sampled the baked. Everyone had French fries.  Z had apple sauce while the rest of us tried the coleslaw.

 I thought the baked fish was fabulous! It was nice and moist and had a lovely dill sauce.  Z grumbled a bit about the lack of macaroni and cheese, but enjoyed the fish. T and F both thought the fish was good, but T said he prefers less of a breaded batter that was served at St. Margaret’s.  We all thought the fries were good. The coleslaw was both creamy and tangy and enjoyed by all three eaters. It is important to note that everything came out hot. Dessert was also included and while we did not confirm this we think that the desserts were home made.

On the down side St. Margaret’s was the most expensive Fish Fry we have eaten at. Children ten and over are adults so we paid the $8 price for all four of us. They also charge .75 for cans of soft drinks and $2.00 for beer domestic beer. You are able to get free “seconds” on your fish however our portions were large enough that it wasn’t necessary.

You could also spend $10 on a commemorative t-shirt.  (I thought it was cool looking, but didn’t buy one.) Another smart move on their part, St. Margaret’s has a cash machine at their entrance. Maybe it was for the fish, maybe for the bingo that seems to be played at other times. 

 

Overall, it was a very good meal.  Many in the crowd commented that this was the Best Fish Fry in Columbus, but among us, it was no one’s favorites so far.

On side note, F and I stopped at Max and Erma’s on our drive back to Columbus and he tried the fish and chips dinner. He decided that the Catholic Churches serve better fish!  I couldn’t get him to be any more descriptive , but since he is a teenager we will have to settle for that.

Next week:  St. Andrew’s in UA! See you there!