Lenten Project III: The Search For Fabulous Fried Fish

It is upon us once again, gentle reader, the season of Lent. And with the season of Lent comes the third annual installment of the Lenten Project. While I am not a particularly religious person, I do look forward every year to a good fish fry. Sadly, and if last year was proof of this, it isn't easy finding a good fish fry. So I've decided to take the fish by the tail and try and improve my odds.

Two years ago, I came up with the idea to use the list of churches and organizations published in the Akron Beacon Journal to determine which churches and organizations to visit during the surprisingly short fish fry season. And because of my love of pierogi, the first year I used the criteria of selecting only those establishments that served both fried fish and pierogi. This yielded me nine different places to visit over the course of five weeks. That first year, I found an overall winner and a runner up where the pierogi were mundane, but the fish was great.

The second year I did the Lenten Project, I decided not to visit any of the organizations from the previous year that were in the lower half of the standings. I again used the criteria of fried fish and pierogi as the determinant for which establishments to try. Sadly, last year's crop were mediocre at best and really, even though there was a church that finished on top, it wasn't a knock-out winner. To top that, several of the organizations I ended up visiting two years in a row not only didn't improve, but some actually got worse. As Joshua so eloquently stated in the 1983 movie Wargames, "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Bound and determined to get a nice piece of fried fish THIS time around, when Lisa Abraham published her annual list of commercial and non-commercial fish fries, I immediately realized that the list needed to be in a more computer friendly form so that I can add notes and sort more easily. Thus, I transcribed the entire list into a Google spreadsheet. It is free for anyone to view and no software needs to be installed, but obviously I've set it up so that only I can update it.

Since none of the descriptions in her article listed whether the fish being used was fresh or fell off the back of a Sysco food truck, I took it upon myself to call each and every organization on both lists. What shocked me (and might go a long way in explaining why last year's fish fries turned out so poorly) was that virtually none of the organizations were using fresh fish. Of the forty-three non-commercial organizations listed in the Beacon article, only TWO were using fresh fish. Pierogi fared a little better, percentage-wise. Of the seven establishments offering pieorgi, only two were homemade and one of those was only being offered this Friday, February 24th -- so if you miss it, too bad.

Now, gentle reader, before I get a deluge of emails and comments saying that you can fry up a perfectly nice piece of fish from frozen, I agree. You can. But a good majority of these organizations are getting the fish pre-battered and frozen and simply frying them from that state. There just didn't seem to be an emphasis in the past on putting out a piece of fried fish that was moist on the inside, crunchy on the outside and not greasy. Thus, save a few exceptions where I know that care has been taken to make sure the fish will be at its best, I have decided to only include places where the fish is fresh.

However, given that only two non-commercial establishments are serving fresh, how will I be able to come up with eight to ten places to try during the next five Fridays? I've decided that I am going to open it up to the commercial (e.g., restaurants) locations listed in the Beacon article, too. Instead of telling you where NOT to go as in the past two years, I want to tell you where you SHOULD go. I want you to have options. Just to be sure, I also called (actually, I'm still in the process of calling) all of the restaurants on the list to determine which places I will visit.

Because I haven't quite finished calling all of the restaurants yet, here is the list of places I will be going for a fried fish dinner during the first Friday of the Lenten Project III, Friday, February 24th:

American Legion Post 281 (4:30 to 7 p.m.)
1601 Front St., Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
330-920-9379


Fat Casual BBQ (5:00 to 8:00 p.m.)
223 East Highland Road, Macedonia, OH 44056
330-748-4690


I'm planning on hitting up the American Legion right at about 5:00 PM and then venturing my way up to Fat Casual between 6:30 and 6:45 PM. If you'd care to join me for either location, you are cordially invited, no reservations required. Once you arrive, you surely cannot miss me, I'll be the guy sitting by himself with a massively-sized camera on a small tabletop tripod. It's hard to miss, really.

So, with that, the Lenten Project III: The Search For Fabulous Fried Fish officially kicks off for 2012. After finishing up my research on the final twenty-ish restaurants, I will post the remainder of my fish-eating schedule next week. If Lent has a more spiritual meaning for you, I wish you the best during this next forty days. For me, I'm looking forward to some good fried fish!

This Just In ... News You Can Use

I don't often put up posts talking about current events or linking to other items I find on the web. However, today I have some happy and some very sad news. Let's start with the sad news first.

I learned just yesterday that a favorite local gourmet market and sandwich shop, Market Gourmet @ Montrose, will be shuttering its doors for the last time today at 3:00 PM. I received a message from Jeff Winer, owner and chef, stating that while he made a valiant effort to stay profitable over the last ten months of existence, with the lack of customers and the skyrocketing food costs, it just didn't make sense to continue losing money. While I have no financial stake in Market Gourmet, this has been my go-to lunch spot for the last six months at least twice a week. I personally will miss his sandwiches, especially the homemade roast beef and the roast turkey.

Roast Turkey Sandwich on Pretzel Bun

Homemade Chicken Enchilada Soup

Because he needs to get rid of as much inventory as he can, all wine has been marked down by 15% and the other gourmet items have been marked down a WHOPPING 50%! Market Gourmet carried high-end chocolates, oils, vinegars, spices, cheeses, charcuterie, and many middle eastern items. While I am sad to see Jeff's hard work end this way, it just goes to remind me that making it in the food service industry is incredibly difficult. Jeff had great products, but many times, having a great product just isn't enough to succeed.

Jeff's next move will be to join the crew of the StrEat Mobile Bistro food truck in Cleveland. Which serves as a very convenient segue to my next, happier topic for this morning.

This coming Sunday, March 27th from 11 AM until 3 PM, there will be a conflagration of food trucks happening at Lincoln Park in Tremont, Ohio. While Dim and Den Sum sort of started the mobile food truck craze in Cleveland, there has been an explosion in available options for diners willing to track these trucks down. Represented on Sunday will be:

- Seti's Polish Boys
- Dim & Den Sum
- Cakes Plus
- Traveling Treats
- Umami Moto
- StrEat Mobile Bistro
- Jibaro
- Pranzo Forno Wood Fired Pizza
- Oh! Babycakes

From what I've been told, there will also be live entertainment, although exactly what, I'm not entirely sure. The weather forecast this morning indicated dry, cold weather for Sunday, but hopefully a nice warm front will move in and make this a sunny and warm outing for lots of hungry customers. It appears that this may be a fairly regular gathering if enough interest is generated, so I plan to be there to grab some snapshots, lots of food, and will write it up on the blog for all of you to see for yourself.

And, finally, my happy news.

When I did the inaugural Lenten Project last year, honestly, it was a time in my life when I had a lot of time on my hands and was looking for something exciting to do on a Friday night. At the time, I don't know that my blog was popular enough for me to get more than a smattering of interest from curious readers. When I contacted Lisa Abraham at the Beacon Journal and told her of my plans, I'm sure her first thought was probably, "Whatever, crazy person!"

But, by mid-summer, I noticed that quite a few people had read part or all of the original Lenten Project series, and by the time I was contacted by Lisa to do an actual newspaper article on local food bloggers (Mike Vrobel, author of the fantastic blog DadCooksDinner being the other blogger she interviewed), she made a point of mentioning the fact in her article about my Herculean fried fish and pierogi journey.

After announcing the schedule for this year's Lenten Project, I was surprised to see many more people engaging me through email, Facebook and Twitter making suggestions, asking questions, and generally being interested. While the list of churches, clubs, and organizations from which I drew was the one published in the Akron Beacon Journal, fellow food blogger Alicia and her husband Hans from Poise in Parma have embarked on their own version of the Lenten Project, looking for good fish fries in their neck of the woods. In fact, as an extra treat next Friday, April 1st, we will (hopefully) be teaming up forces to review a fish fry somewhere between Akron and Parma.

Not to be left behind, Lisa Abraham ran a piece in the food section of the Akron Beacon this week doing her part to contribute to the fish fry love that is happening during Lent. Instead of evaluating church fish fries, she went out to the local fast food restaurants (which included Swenson's, too) to see who had the best fish sandwich. While I don't know that I'd want to eat five fish sandwiches in a day (much less a single sitting), I admire her willingness to go that extra mile for her readers.

Well, that's it for now, folks. I'll be having my final sandwich, the roast beef on pretzel bun at Market Gourmet for lunch today, and then it's off for two fish fries for dinner. Feel free to join me at either dinner if you'd like, I'm always up for some company. In case you are curious, my fish fry schedule is on the Community Calendar on the right hand side of the blog.

It's Officially On: The Lenten Project II

With the release of this year's list of churches, clubs, and organizations from the Akron Beacon Journal, I have decided to revisit last year's gargantuan fish fry and pierogi eating juggernaut: The Lenten Project. While last year's winner, St. Joan of Arc Church in Streetsboro, Ohio, has been excluded from official judging, I do intend to finish out the Lenten Friday fish fries with a stop for my final dinner on April 15th. There will be some repeats from last year from those places that offered a better dinner as well as some new faces. For those that fared poorly in last year's competition (i.e. the bottom half of the results list), in order to make room for potentially new (and hopefully better) contestants, I will give those a pass.

While the Beacon Journal's list is extensive, once you narrow down the offerings to those institutions listing both fish and pierogi on their menu, it becomes much more reasonable. To encourage reader participation, I intend to list the date and time of my visits to each destination and I will add them to the Community Calendar that appears on the right hand side of the screen. Like last year, the judging will be fairly straightforward. I will attempt at each location to buy a meal that provides a combination of both fish and pierogi (and any other interesting looking side dish) and provide a letter based assessment of the food (A - B - C - D - F).

Since there are invariably more fish fries to attend than Fridays available, there will be some weeks where I have an early meal and a late meal. One lesson I learned from last year's effort was that a two-meal day can produce a quite lengthy write-up (especially with pictures). To help minimize this problem, my early meal will post on the Saturday morning following the visit and my later meal will post on the Sunday morning after that. In this way, you aren't overloaded with reading and I am not overloaded with writing.

Even though the fish fries go through April 15th, my intention is to have the judging completed by April 8th so that you can take what I have said for each of the meals and decide which dinner to attend on that final fish fry night.

Okay, enough rules and explanation. Here's the list of fish fries in the mix this time around (note, the times listed in bold are when I plan to arrive):

March 11th
St. Mary Church (5:00 PM)
340 North Main Street, Hudson
330-650-0722 ext. 244

Our Lady of Guadalupe (6:30 PM)
9080 Shepard Road, Macedonia
330-468-2194 ext. 38

March 18th
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church (5:00 PM)
Greek Community Center
129 S. Union Street, Akron
330-434-0000
(Dinners only run until April 8th)

March 25th
Queen of Heaven Church (5:00 PM)
Parish Life Center
1800 Steese Road, Green, Uniontown
330-896-2345

St. George Romanian Byzantine Catholic Cathedral (6:45 PM)
11223 44th Street NE, Canton
330-492-8413

April 1st
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church (5:00 PM)
755 South Cleveland Avenue, Mogadore
330-628-1333

April 8th
Slovak J Club (5:00 PM)
485 Morgan Avenue, Akron
330-786-9972

Polish American Club (6:45 PM)
472 East Glenwood Avenue, Akron
330-253-0496

The hours and menus for each of the locations listed above will appear in the respective calendar entries on the EFMW Community Calendar.

And, just in case I haven't made it clear, you are more than welcome to join me for any and all of the dinners I've listed above. While food is always a good thing, sharing a meal with a friendly face is even better. For those of my gentle readers celebrating the Lenten season, I wish you the best. For those just celebrating the vast choices of fried fish for the next six weeks, grab your fork and get your bottle of Tums ready.

Lenten Project II: Time To Break The Rules

As any follower of this blog has no doubt determined by now, I ALWAYS publish something on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sure, I throw in a little something extra from time to time, but those three days are IRON CLAD! You can count on me ... well, until now. Since the Lenten Project II is starting this Friday (more information to come on Wednesday), I just won't have time to post five times a week like I did during last year's fish fry odyssey. In order to balance out the posting schedule, I've decided to post my write-ups on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday (for my first fish fry of the evening from Friday) and potentially Sunday (if I had a second fish fry to attend) during the weeks in Lent.

The good news is that this madness is truly temporary and will only last a little longer than a month or so until the end of the fish fry season. The list of local Akron organizations that are doing fish fries won't be published in the Akron Beacon Journal until Wednesday morning, so I won't be able to announce my list of destination dinners until a little later than normal. However, I want to make sure I give all of my readers ample opportunity to join me for a Lenten dinner if they so choose. Sadly, no one joined me last year, but I'm hoping some of you might want to come out on a Friday night to join me for a bit of good food (hopefully) and fellowship (definitely). No reservations are required and I'll publish where and when I'll be over the next five weeks. You can also check the community calendar to see what my eating schedule will be.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me and I'll be happy to respond to any concerns. I always hope that the organizations that put on these meals realize that this is a special time of year and go out of their way to do something unique. From last year's results, I realized that too many places were relying on Mrs. T's frozen pierogi and food service frozen fish that you can get any time of the year. Let's hope this year is different!

I look forward to dining with some of my gentle readers over the next couple of weeks. And for those celebrating the Christian holiday of Lent, I wish you the very best.