Fish fries are a community tradition in Southwestern Pennsylvania
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
The Rev. Dr. Kary Williams works the stove on the first Friday of Lent, Feb. 28, for one of the parish’s weekly fish fries.
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Frank Besedick of Carroll Township helps fill orders in the kitchen of St. Katharine Drexel in Bentleyville during one of the parish’s fish fries.
Gideon Bradshaw/Observer-Reporter
Frank Besedick, a volunteer from the Knights of Columbus, reaches for a plate in the kitchen of St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Bentleyville during a Friday fish fry last month.
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Last year, Jessica and Frank Besedick happened to be in Berlin, Ohio, on Good Friday and Easter weekend. In search of their usual meal for the Christian observance, they went looking for a local fish fry, but had to settle for ordering fish at a Hoss’s Steak & Seahouse instead.
“There was none,” Jessica Besedick said. “They didn’t know what a fish fry was.”
The letdown was an exception for the married couple from Carroll Township. On the first Friday of Lent last week, they were among the volunteers who were at St. Katharine of Drexel in Bentleyville. Frank was among the Knights of Columbus who were cooking fish, shrimp, crab cakes and other dishes in the kitchen. Jessica helped fill takeout orders in the parish hall.
One of those is St. Paul AME Church, where the Rev. Dr. Kary Williams Jr. was frying up cod and catfish for sandwiches the same Friday.
“They call me the ‘Catfish King,'” said Williams, who said he was born on the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, his home state, but as a pastor has moved around often, and introduces his churches to catfish, which he cooks with a secret recipe he declined to reveal. Since he became pastor of the Ridge Avenue church a year and a half ago, it’s started holding fish fries on Fridays in the summer and during the Lenten season. He said the weekly events draw “close to 100” people on a good day.
“Catfish is pretty popular,” Williams said. “We sell a lot of catfish, but we sell quite a bit of cod, too.”
He said Lent – which commemorates the scriptural story of Jesus Christ’s 40 days of fasting in the desert before his death and resurrection – isn’t only a Roman Catholic observance.
“To me, it’s a learning experience,” Williams said. “It’s an opportunity to draw closer to God.”
Back in the St. Katharine Drexel, Dorothy Brova and her friend Eileen Dziak, both longtime parishioners, were enjoying a late lunch.
Brova said she’s one of the volunteers who make pierogies in the church basement before holidays and other events, including the Lenten feasts. Meals come with a free drink and dessert.
The fish fries there are so well attended – drawing 400 or 500 people over the course of a day – that the parish held one on each of the three Fridays before Lent and on Ash Wednesday.
“They’re quite popular in the area,” said Dziak. “People look forward to them. I know I do.”
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