Dana Mathewson

PITTSBURGH -- Evelyn Wade was standing in a line with her friends, Sandra Owen and Janet Mundy. The queue not only filled the long hallway of the Allegheny Elks Club lobby but went out the door and down the steps. It then stretched around the city block of Cedar Avenue. Wade is a regular at the neighborhood fraternal club's weekly Lenten Friday fish fry. Owen and Mundy are not.

"Evelyn said the fish sandwiches are amazing, but she also said the atmosphere was great, too," Owen said. "Even though I am not even at a table yet, I can see what she means. You get a real sense of belonging and community just standing here meeting people."

For the next three hours, the social hall of the city neighborhood's Elks filled up with hundreds of people grabbing whatever chair they could find on long, cafeteria-style tables sitting side by side, most of the time with people they had never met. They discussed the neighborhood, found out they knew someone who knew someone who knew them, as well as the tastiness of the freshly made battered cod, homemade stick-to-your-ribs macaroni and cheese, coleslaw and french fries they devoured.

Friday fish fries are an American tradition rooted in the Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent, a practice brought here during the great European migration of the early 20th century, with many of those immigrants settling in Rust Belt Appalachia and the Midwest.

First seen as an inexpensive way for the devout to gather and enjoy meals in church halls with people from their parish, it soon became a way for those same parishes to raise money for the funding of schools and churches because of the relatively low cost to make a dinner out of fish.

They are almost all exclusively run by a team of dedicated volunteers young and old who usually start their preparations for the meals on Tuesdays. They start by purchasing the breading, macaroni, cheese, eggs, fresh cabbage and milk for the sides. Most parishes and organizations buy the fish fresh at the market on Friday mornings.

The Lenten fish fry has since expanded across the nation, migrating in the same patterns as the children and grandchildren of the families who originated them. Each region showcases its cultural flair with dishes at the events -- in the Midwest, it is cod and walleye, in the South, it is catfish, and on the Atlantic coastline, it is lobster and crab.

The side dishes are almost as important: macaroni and cheese, pierogies, french fries, coleslaw and hush puppies are the most popular.

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