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When you pull into the St. Cecilia Parish parking lot on Friday night during the Lenten season, prepare to be hit by the sound and the aroma of the famous Mexican Fish Fry as soon as you open your car door.
The loud fiesta music piped through the PA surely draws in people within earshot from the Benton Park neighborhood, but it’s the wafting smell of cheesy, spicy chiles rellenos frying in the semi-outdoor kitchen that penetrates deeper, into the hungry animal-brain. ¡Vaya con los chiles rellenos!
You enter the gymnasium to a riot of activity: people crowded at tables, loud music, children dancing in folk costumes, teens pushing tamale carts, and lines – absurdly long lines -- of people waiting to order. The queue hugs several of the gym walls before collapsing into a maze of humanity cordoned by white, plastic chains near the four cashiers. This is serious bidness.
Probably more than 100 volunteers are scurrying about, many wearing snappy, bright orange “Mexican Fish Fry” T-shirts. These women, men, and children are cooking, working the register, serving lemonade and coffee, ferrying plates (they have table service!), bussing tables, selling iced angelfood cake for a dollar a slice at the dessert tables, and so on. A roving mariachi band performs to big smiles, especially when everyone sings along to “Cielito Lindo.” Girls in St. Cecilia Catholic-school uniforms walk around, whispering to one another and giggling.
The weekly Lenten menu features chips with super-fresh Pico de Gallo and scorching-hot green jalapeno salsa, fried quesadilla pockets, tostadas, a shrimp dish, mac ‘n cheese, and a few other items, including unremarkable rhomboids of fried cod.
The acknowledged star of the show is the chiles rellenos -- a plate-wide poblano chile, stem and all, stuffed with cheese, dipped in egg batter, and fried. It’s a delicious fat-bomb that seems to promote a mounting sense of guilt as you carve away at its irresistible vastness.
When you’re done, you won’t want to leave – St. Cecilia, like the best parishes, makes you want to soak up the vicarious communal vibe that attracts as surely as the fried food. It’s a ritual -- families volunteer and eat together, kids run around the tables in youthful insanity, adolescents shyly push tamale carts from table to table, the mariachi band mellows you out, and the lemonade ladies call you “Hon’.” It’s just a welcoming scene.
This is not a fish fry where you dine for the fish -- it’s not even a fish fry where you dine for the food at all, necessarily. It’s a destination where you get that feeling that the workweek is graciously transitioning to a mellow weekend, in an old-fashioned, neighborly banquet setting, where a human community gathers and –miracle of miracles -- actually feels like a community, to parishioners and guests alike. This may be Lent, but this is no hardship.
And even if you gave up dessert for Lent, reward yourself afterwards by sneeking a peek at the ornately decorated church, where young students in crisp uniforms conduct short, historical tours (the plum job at St. C’s, we’re told) that we guarantee will wow you.
There are three more Mexican Fish Fry’s left at St. Cecilia – Fridays, April 1, 8, and 15.
Photo credits: Above: David E Kennedy
Below: John Langholz
