Running the Kitchen at the Church Fish Fry

Every Friday during Lent, our parish hosts a fish fry in the basement, and for the last six years I've run the kitchen. I'm not Catholic. I just love it.

There are thirty volunteers, ages fourteen to ninety. The teenagers run the drink station. The old men fry the fish in giant vats and argue about batter. The women at the dessert table have ranked every cake in town and will tell you which ones to avoid.

We serve about four hundred people a night. There are firefighters, families with toddlers, a table of nuns who always order extra coleslaw, and a man who has come every Friday since 1984.

At nine p.m., when the last plate goes out, the whole kitchen crew sits down together to eat whatever's left. Burnt fries, cold fish, the slightly sad cake. Best meal of the week.