EXPORT, Pennsylvania — Ken Petri is a devout Catholic who heartily embraces the traditions of his faith, including the Lenten practice of abstaining from meat each Friday during the six-week season of reflection and sacrifice ahead of Easter Sunday.
He also just loves the sense of community that comes along with the tradition.
“Typically, our family and our friends attend different parishes each week,” he explains. The Lenten fish fry “gives us the opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of good food, not just the fish sandwich but other dishes like homemade Haluska, eggplant parmesan, or pierogis.”
“And the people in each community, well, some of them aren’t even Catholic and aren’t even there for the food,” he adds. “They just enjoy being around other people from the neighborhood or meeting new people and connecting after the dark winter.”
Western Pennsylvanians who have followed Petri for years on social media await his Friday evening critique of each parish’s fish fry as he painstakingly details the flavor and density of the breading, its crispness, and the ingenuity of the coveted side dish.
In the pre-pandemic world, Catholic communities across the Midwest not just here in western Pennsylvania but also in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan gathered beginning Ash Wednesday, in church basements, school cafeterias, at Elks, Moose, or other fraternal social clubs, for the ritual of enjoying the feast and each other.
The popularity of the fish fry here in western Pennsylvania is so intense that nearly every news organization provides its viewers maps of where to go to get dinner.
The experience is centered on faith, but it also on filling the coffers of local parishes and connecting the social fabric of a neighborhood or community.
Petri lives for it. So do a lot of other people. And so last year, at the onset of the pandemic, it was a bitter disappointment when the spring ritual was canceled. There was to be no sitting at long cafeteria tables, no gathering of friends or family, no meeting new people, no connecting. Some parishes at least offered takeout, but most did not.
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On Feb. 5 of this year, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced parish fish fries could resume, but only as a takeout.
Petri, undeterred by the restrictions, went to St. Catherine’s in the suburban North Hills of Pittsburgh. “The menus are really scaled back, and you had to order and pay for it in advance online,” he says. “But I figured I am supporting a parish, I am fulfilling my obligation to abstain from meat, and maybe I will be able to get in some way that sense of community back I’ve been missing.”
Despite doing everything he was supposed to do and arriving long before his allotted time, Petri encountered a line. He said he didn’t think much of it until a half-hour passed, then an hour, then 90 minutes. At the two-hour mark, he was five cars away from being served when a handful of teenagers emerged from the church cafeteria door with some unfortunate news. “Hey, we ran out of food. So if you give us your name, we’ll make sure you get it next week.”
Petri says there were exactly 50 cars behind him when this happened. He knows because he counted them.
On his drive home, he picked up a meatless pizza.
There are photos of long lines from fish fries across several counties here, with thousands of people having similar pursuits and similar letdowns.
Petri’s determination for the greasy wonderfulness of Catholic comfort food has really nothing to do with a fried fish sandwich at all. He is merely after what we have lost, not just Catholics but everyone in this country, in the form of a deteriorating pandemic-era social fabric.
Our lifeline to connectivity with each other has been severed. Our children are not in schools, nor are they participating in sports. Some grandparents and grandchildren have gone over a year of missing that great generational connection that soothes and educates both age groups. The fabric of our society, already frayed by two decades of an internet-connected world, is shredding further and faster.
“There’s some camaraderie to fish fries, and, believe it or not, there’s a camaraderie to going to a fish fry with people you’ve never met,” explains Petri, a 56-year-old military veteran. “Everybody seems to be on the same page in regards to what it’s about, but everybody’s happy. It’s a wonderful thing.”
This Friday, Petri is heading out once again, like others in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan, who also were also either stuck in long lines or unable to get their fish meal.
A quick Google news search shows Petri is not alone in his aspirational pursuit.
Like him, they are undeterred and prepared to tilt at that same windmill we are all looking to conquer, which is being us again, being all part of something bigger than ourselves. Even if it comes in the form of a crispy cod sandwich and gooey macaroni and cheese.
