The Lenten Project, Week 4 (1 of 2)

Originally, this week's fish fry visit was to be at just one location, Our Lady of Grace in Hinckley, Ohio. Because of the massive snow storm that hit the Akron area just two weeks ago, I had to try and reposition the two fish fries I wanted to hit that day for an alternate Friday. Since one of those dinners was actually a lunchtime fish fry at the Peninsula United Methodist Church, I easily moved that one to this week's docket. Given that today was a beautiful and warm day, I happily headed up Route 8 until I reached Route 303 and drove west until I reached downtown Peninsula.

The Peninsula United Methodist Church was located at 1575 Main Street, Peninsula, OH and can be reached at 330-657-2567. Unfortunately, there was no website associated with this exact parish at the time of this writing. Parking was either on the street or in a lot at the rear of the church.

After parking and getting out of my car I decided to take a shot of the front of the church:


The lunches and dinners are very clearly advertised. What wasn't so well advertised was where the entrance to the fish fry was. I actually ended up going into the kitchen instead of the real entrance. The real entrance was on the left side of the church and looked like this:


Very clearly marked, no? The door at the top of the stairs was the entrance into the small room where long tables had been set up and paper placemats arranged at every seat. As with most of the fish fries I've been to so far, there was a small desk sitting by a menu where you placed and paid for your order.

Here was a shot of the menu on the wall:


At $7.50, this was the cheapest fish fry I have attended, but then again, macaroni and cheese wasn't being offered which would've driven the price up slightly. I would say that the cost was very much inline with most of the others. What surprised me was the sheer number of available pierogi from which one could choose: Potato and cheese; potato and onion; potato, cheese, and bacon; sauerkraut; yam and walnut; apple pie; apricot; and prune. Wow! And all homemade, no less. Deciding I'd stick with the savory over the sweet, I ordered the combination platter which would give me my choice of two pierogi and one piece of fish, baked or fried; I chose fried.

After paying for my order, the woman behind the desk told me to help myself to a roll and condiments. I selected a table near a window and snapped a photograph of my spoils:


Rolls and pats of butter had been individually portioned out into small plastic bags. I wasn't crazy about the commercial tartar sauce, but I could live with it. I thought about eating my roll and butter while I waited for my lunch to arrive, but I'm glad I didn't. Within about ten minutes, my first plate arrived at the table:


I now had two rolls, two pats of butter, two sour creams, and two tartar sauce packets. I went ahead and returned the originals back to the baskets up front. I'm sure you'll also notice, gentle reader, that something was missing from the above plate. The woman who brought this out to me told me that the fried fish would be out shortly. I decided to go ahead eat what was in front of me while I waited for my fish since the pierogi were hot and I that was the way I wanted to experience them.

The applesauce was sweetened and had cinnamon added to it. While I don't mind the addition of the cinnamon, I prefer my applesauce unsweetened. Fortunately, this one wasn't too sweet, so it didn't offend. The roll was of the standard restaurant dinner variety. The pat of butter had clearly been out of refrigeration for a while as the butter was easily spreadable. The coleslaw had a bit of an acidic zing to it which was nice, but given the very even cut of the vegetables in the slaw, this clearly was not homemade.

It turned out that the only item on my plate that was homemade today were the pierogi:


Swimming in a pool of melted butter and topped with fried onions, both of my pierogi were quite delicious. The casing was tender and the filling in each was seasoned quite well. While I questioned the provenance of the potato and cheese pierogi at first (the one on the left) because it kind of had that perfectly shaped appearance, one bite of the filling and I knew that this had not come from a machine. The potato hadn't been mashed completely smooth, so there were still small nuggets of cooked potato that gave this a wonderful texture. The sauerkraut-filled pierogi was equally good, although the casing tended to fall apart just a bit too easily. This made it harder to get a nice bite of filling and casing at the same time.

Here was a side shot of the potato and cheese pierogi:


After finishing my pierogi and most of my tray full of food, the same woman who had run my food out of the kitchen the first time returned with a small plate of fried fish:


Normally the combination plate was two pierogi and one piece of fish. Because I had waited for the fish, she brought me an extra piece for my trouble. I kind of wish she hadn't. It turned out that the fried fish was a frozen breaded cod that came from Gordon Food Services (GFS). While the fish had been fried correctly, the coating was so hard that I needed to employ my plastic knife in order to even cut it. Even with the knife, it didn't prevent the fish inside and the coating outside to split apart because of the force required to portion the fish into bite sized pieces.

Here was a shot of the interior of the fillet on the left:


The fillet on the left was the thinner of the two and was therefore drier. While the fish by itself was decent, the breading had a very strange flavor that completely overpowered the delicate flavor of the cod. I tried a bite of fish with some of the tartar sauce, but unfortunately, all I could then taste was the overly sweet pickle relish-laden tartar sauce. Texturally the fish was fine, but between the odd flavor of the crust and the somewhat dried out fillet I received, I think I'd recommend passing on the fried fish.

The pierogi, however, were definitely worth the drive. Between the tender casings, the clearly homemade fillings, and the sheer variety available, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend just going for an all pierogi dinner (which gets you four pierogi, by the way). I arrived today at 11:15 AM to find myself the only person dining at the church. By the time I left, thirty minutes later, there were probably about eight other people sitting and waiting for food. Apparently they do a lot of takeout during lunch hours and the dining room is much busier for the evening fish fry.

Starting with this post and continuing for the remainder, at the end of each review, I'm going to give my rankings from best overall to worst overall as well as an individual grade for each of the major elements on the plate (Fish, Mac & Cheese, and Pierogi).

1. St. Joan of Arc (Streetsboro): Fish, B; Mac & Cheese, A; Pierogi, A
2. Our Lady of Peace (Canton): Fish, A; Mac & Cheese, C; Pierogi, C
3. United Methodist Church (Peninsula): Fish, C+; Pierogi, B
4. Knights of Columbus (Mantua): Fish, C; Mac & Cheese, C-; Pierogi, A
5. Duffy's Restaurant (Akron): Fish, C-; Mac & Cheese, F

Lunch In A Tough Economy

After my first visit to Vaccaro's Trattoria back in May 2009, I was so impressed with my visit that I immediately signed up for their email feed by filling out a little card while finishing up paying for my meal. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to subscribe to this feed on their website. And while the restaurant sends out updates on their Facebook group page, they have yet to make the most of all of the current social media networks (specifically Twitter). One network they have been very good at utilizing is their email feed and the sending out of timely emails detailing current specials. I have taken advantage of these specials in the past and decided that one of their current specials was just too good to pass up.

I had received an email from Vaccaro's both last week and this promoting their weekday $6 lunch special. For a measly $6, you get to choose from one of three salads, one of two soups, and one of four sandwiches, all of which will come out on one plate. Since I happened to be in the Bath / Montrose area last Thursday for other business, I decided to stop in for lunch and try it out for myself.

I arrived at around 11:30 am to find a mostly empty dining room. A mere thirty minutes later and the place was really hopping. After the hostess sat me at my table, she left me with the lunch menu (which was more than just the $6 special) to peruse at my leisure:



While the regular lunch prices were very reasonable, I had come only armed with a $10 bill in my wallet and a hunger in my stomach. Here was the "Lunch On A Platter" portion of the lunch menu:


The salad and soup choices were fairly easy for me to make. Having tried some of these menu items in my previous visits, I decided to make an effort to get something new this time. My salad would be the Caesar and my soup would be the daily special; today it was Chicken Piccata. The only question for me was which sandwich to pick. While they all sounded good, I was mysteriously drawn towards the tuna melt. I had never actually had a tuna melt before and the thought occurred to me that if Raphael Vaccaro had put it on his menu, it had to be good.

I placed my order with my server and sat back in my chair to catch up on the news on my smartphone. In what came as a bit of a surprise, my server returned with both a plate of grated cheese in olive oil,


but also a trio of breads in which to dip it:


Here you had the housemade focaccia, a multi-grain bread and a baguette-style bread. All three were fresh and delicious and a welcome sight to this hungry diner. The fact that Vaccaro's could offer bread service in addition to the lunch trio I had ordered all for only $6 was quite remarkable. I had to remind myself not to fill up on bread and oil as my lunch would soon be arriving.

And sure enough, after a short interval, it did:


The Caesar salad was dressed in a more acidic dressing than I am normally used to on this type of salad. It wasn't too lemony, but you could definitely pick up on the lemon juice. Some might prefer this version, it felt lighter on my palate. Personally, I prefer the heavier, less acidic version. The salty and savory qualities from the shaved Parmesan on top of the salad helped to tame some of the bright lemon flavor. You can't see them from the picture above, but just below the surface were a number of very tasty homemade croutons. They added a lovely saltiness and textural element to the dish.

Next up on the plate was the tuna melt:


Comprised of house made tuna salad on a split and toasted ciabatta roll and topped with cheddar cheese, this was a very delicious sandwich. Besides the brunoise of sweet peppers and celery in the tuna salad, with every bite I took, I noticed a very mild, but particular spicy zip and acidic zing. Nothing overpowering, just enough to make it interesting. I had thought that maybe they were employing a chili mayonnaise in the tuna salad, but after asking my server about it, she consulted the kitchen staff and learned that they were adding a very thin layer of Frank's Red Hot onto the bread before topping it with tuna salad and cheese. That little extra bit of something, or je ne sais quoi, was just what was needed to take the sandwich from good to great.

The third component of my trio was the Chicken Piccata soup:


From my first bite to my last, this was a tasty soup. It had all of the wonderful elements of a good chicken piccata: strong lemon flavor, nice briny capers, and tender chicken. Each of the elements balanced well with its companions. It reminded me of another successful "entree" meal that had been turned into a soup, the lasagna soup at Twig's Diner. The only minor complaint that I had with today's soup du jour was that it came out of the kitchen not quite as hot as I would've liked. That didn't stop me from eating the entire bowl, of course.

As I finished my lunch today, I realized that this was the absolute perfect amount of food to fill me up. So many times I've gone to restaurants and wished that I could get an appropriate amount of food (usually half of what is usually served) for a smaller amount of money. So often I feel that the American diner thinks that if they don't have an overabundance of food being served on the plate, then there is little value for the dollar. Personally, I love that for only $6, I was served just the right amount to fill me up and I didn't have to worry about futzing around with leftovers.

To my surprise, at the height of the lunch rush, Chef Raphael came out to the dining room to speak with several customers. He noticed me sitting in the corner of the dining room and approached for a brief conversation. I complimented him on my meal and told him that I noticed a lot of people had ordered the $6 special. He acknowledged that it was indeed a very popular special and that in this current economy, he felt like he needed to offer something filling and tasty that didn't break the bank. Honestly, I hope he keeps this special or a variation of it on the lunch menu even after the economy recovers. It represents a nice way to get fed great made-from-scratch food without being overfed and at the same price point as a McDonald's value meal.

While I knew that the meal was going to only be $6, in the back of my mind there was still a bit of disbelief; that is, until this arrived at my table:


$6.41 with tax. Extraordinary! If Vaccaro's Trattoria was right around the corner, I would be in serious trouble as I'd be eating there for lunch at least three times a week. With the two dozen or so combinations between salads, soups, and sandwiches that make up one of their lunch platters, you will have plenty of options from which to choose. Even if you decide to order one of the other lunch items from the menu, from my previous visits in the past, I'm sure you will not be disappointed. I definitely recommend that you give Vaccaro's Trattoria a chance if you are in the area.

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Raphael Vaccaro, Owner and Chef of Vaccaro's Trattoria responds:

Tom....

Thanks for all the great compliments. It is people like yourself that motivate me in this tough business! The only correction I have is the website is now complete with FB, Twitter, Reservations, Ring Me, and all menu's. Take a look. I think you will like it.

Raphael