A Weekly Report on Cincinnati’s Lenten Fish Fries…

I’m not Catholic. I just happen to like fish.

Having been raised in Philadelphia, we grew up with fresh fish, always beautiful and fresh. Not just the bland supermarket varieties like cod and flounder, but the more colorful and flavorful fish such as bass, perch, catfish, and crab, a giant undersea assortment apropos to a big coastal city with scores of fishmongers. On our many vacations to the beaches along the east coast, we learned to fish from piers, crab at my aunt’s house, and collect mussels in the bays not far from my grandmother’s beach house in North Carolina. We’d always eat what we caught.

Five years ago, my partner and I moved from Philadelphia to the much more landlocked Cincinnati. Fish was something jetted into Ohio, or trucked in frozen at best. It was mostly foreign to the region. People didn’t really eat it as much here, vocally announcing their dislike of all things from the sea.  I mostly stayed away from it, wary of its origins, until I discovered good sources. I discovered Cincinnati’s local forms of sustenance, like Skyline and its orange cheese, or Dewey’s with its gourmet but definitely not Italian pizza. Fish wasn’t something I sought out here – it was just wrong to want it in a region so far inland. But I missed fish.

What I didn’t realize was that Cincinnati, so very German Catholic Cincinnati, bites the bullet and eats fish for religious purposes, during a six week period called “Lent”, the six week period we, in our house, also call “Fish Fry Season”.

During my  first year came Lent. Driving around the city, I noticed signs for Fish Fries on many churches, VFW’s, and fire halls. “People actually eat fish here?” I said to my Northern Kentucky-born partner. “Only for religious purposes”, he said, as he explained how each Friday during Lent, Catholics are asked to not eat meat, and since it was a church requirement, many organizations held fish fries as fundraisers. Hmm. “Want to check out the church around the corner tonight for dinner?” “Sure.”

So, my first fish fry was in our neighborhood, and I was, no pun intended, hooked. The commanding Saint Francis De Sales Catholic Church, at the corner of Madison Road and Woodburn Avenue, in East Walnut Hills at what’s commonly referred to as DeSales Corner.  DeSales’ Fish Fry is one of the best in the city, I’ve found.

For its fried fish dinner, DeSales starts with fresh whiting, and hand batters each piece it fries with a corn meal batter. Three or four pieces are served on a platter, with your choice of mac and cheese or fries, all served with cole slaw and your choice of wheat or white bread. It’s plain food but it’s all homemade and there’s a lot of it. The mac and cheese is creamy and cheesy and served from big vats with a crispy top. The cole slaw tastes like my mom’s.

Baked varieties of fish, pizza, or just a “Fish slider” are available as well as the fried dinners. Look for a newer looking school structure sort of behind the church, it’s a busy place. Place your order at the window, and pay, they give you a ticket, go find a seat and listen for your number. When you hear your number, raise your hand and one of the school’s students will deliver your meal. Drinks include canned sodas and coffee and are $.50 extra. Raffles happen on the stage, take a chance on the Split-the-Pot!

The DeSales’ Fish Fry is one of the hidden gems of the city, always delicious and plentiful! We always try to get there at least two times during this six week cycle. The food is consistently good and made fresh each week. We’ve taken many friends there who had no knowledge of fish fries, and they’ve even gone back on their own!

Each week until Easter, my faithful Doug and I will be scoping out the best in Cincinnati fish fries. Tonight? I think we’re going to the West side to St. William for week two. Stay tuned.

On January 19, 2007, Sean Beall’s apartment complex caught fire. He did not make it out. I knew him as JSpaceman, his handle on The Future of Rock-n-Roll.

Sean lived in Indiana and worked as an on-air DJ for a radio station.  He had been posting on Woxy.com since June 2003; his post count numbered 22,080 and he is still number 3 on the member’s list with the most posts. Sean visited Cincinnati as frequently as he could for board bashes and, up until his death, we had epic battles on the boards as to whether an online community was a viable, real community holding any significance in our personal lives or in the world.

We no longer have these discussions.

Sean’s co-worker and close friend posted his passing on our board in a thread titled ‘Goodbye JSpace’.  You can view the thread here Goodbye JSpace  but be forewarned; there are 51 pages containing over 1000 posts and you will cry upon reading it.

We organized and donated in Sean’s honor to The National Association for Music Education and, on March 29, 2007,  the Association sent a letter to Sean’s family detailing the purchase of three bricks to be placed in Sean’s honor on the “Walk of Fame”.  A total of 83 board members participated.  Many of them lived in the Greater Cincinnati or Northern Kentucky area at the time and some had never met Sean.

This is how much he touched our lives…

Sean’s dad (DadSpaceman) visits the boards from time to time to say hi and to let us know he is thinking about us.

This is how much we touched his…

I post this thinking of  yesterday’s blog and comments.  For those who doubt that people will come together and for those who believe their own participation does not carry meaning; thank you Sean for teaching me to never underestimate the power of community and to never underestimate the ability of one person to influence the lives of others even in a virtual medium.

Classic

We support Haitian relief!

Well we were not going to debut the blog until this weekend, but I cannot in good conscience allow this subject to wait.

You see, I relocated here from New Orleans. Over the past four years before moving to the Queen City I was living surrounded by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure that followed it. After seeing everyone I know suffer the effects of the disaster there I can really feel for the people of Haiti. This is thrown into even sharper relief by the fact that Haiti, the poorest nation in the Caribbean donated $38,000 in American dollars for relief efforts in NOLA.

So today we will debut with something a bit more wide ranging than our intended Cincy-centric content. Today I would like to appeal to all of you to extend a hand to those less fortunate than ourselves.

I’m sure that you’ve been inundated, as have I, with relief requests from a wide variety of groups. Please take a moment before you donate to any of them and run their names through the Charity Navigator. You see there are a LOT of unprincipled bozos out there running scams, attempting to profit from the pain of our neighbors to the South. There are also a lot of charities where the money does not always go where it is supposed to.  This CBS expose on the Red Cross not distributing donations after 9-11 is an excellent case in point. Be careful when you give!

On the local level CincyBurb writes about donations being taken at Matthew 25 Ministries, where they are taking food donations in addition to the cash. [Info Here]

If you know of other efforts being made in the Cincy area please leave details in the comments so we can share them with the community. The ones that make it through a Charity Navigator check will be edited into this post for our readers’ ease of access.

This is not the way I wanted to launch this blog, but every time I look at the devastation I cannot help but think of my home town of New Orleans and the wreckage that still exists throughout the city. I’ve seen families ripped apart and houses reduced to rubble on a constant basis for the past four years until I moved to Northside. I cannot fail to help, I hope that some of you out there feel the same way.

[EDIT 01/15/10: We have removed the link to Yele, which was verified previously by another source, due to this article on the Smoking Gun. It seems they may not be as reputable as we believed. Better safe than sorry. -Loki]

Beginning with our next post we will be focused on purely Cincinnati based content.Pardon this off topic start, but as you can tell I feel strongly about this.

Coming Soon:

• Urban Sustainability in Cincy with Dark Martha
• Cincy Skate Scene News with Fickle Lew
• Local Photographers: dEj and The Criptress
• Random Ruminations by GeekJames and Loki
• Other contributors are being added steadily, if you’d like to be one of them contact Loki!

Thank you for reading!

-Loki, CincyVoices Founder