Fish Frydays 2012 #6: Saint Mary Magdalen

Don't quite understand.

Good morning! I hope everyone has had a good Lenten season and a number of great Fish Frys! I think  it’s safe to say that we’ve had a better year this year than we did last year. I hope you all did too.

As has been the case this year, our ever changing cast of characters changed again. The wife and baby had spirited away to the East Coast this past week, her yearly get together with some old friends. This week it was just myself and my mother in law, again a brand new combination.

I had heard many good things about Saint Mary Magdalen over the years, but I had ruled it out because I wanted to stay in the City, but I’ve learned that it is getting harder and harder to find new places in the City, so we have made three trips outside of our fair city this year.

What first struck me about the place was that they were selling beer in their trophy room right inside the door, but what I found when I went to purchase one was that if you wanted “beer,” they’ve you covered, but if you wanted “Schlafly,” you had to go to the inside on the other side of the gym, so I just got my beer after I’d gotten some fish.

Fork dispenser. This place was fancy.

This was another one of those places that I think has too many volunteers, because they have two lines again. First we waited in line to order and pay for our fish, at which point they then wrote it down on slips of paper and then we took those slips into the kitchen. Once we’d arrived in the kitchen, I noticed they had fork dispensers. I’m getting a bit older in years and it has been some time since I’ve been in high school, but this was a first for me. I almost didn’t quite know how to get a fork, but I got it and was on my way.

Then we handed our slips of paper to the volunteers there who filled up our plates. Here is where it starts to get a little interesting. Aside from the normal sides of green beans, which I got, and fries, which I didn’t, and macaroni and cheese, i.e. the expected side dishes, here they also were offering parmesan chips. Well, part of why I love fish frys so very much was that a wonderful memory from my childhood was my father frying buffalo fish and chips for my family in our garage. I love fresh chips, but I avoid them like the plague at restaurants, because I’ve only ever gotten them in stale and nasty form, but I figured I’d give that a go here. To sidle up to my green beans and parm chips, I chose a couple pieces of fried cod.

Fish, chips, and beans!

Our dinners were boxed up in to go boxes. I’m not really a fan of these as I’m going to eat in, not take it to go and I just find them hard to eat out of. Oh well, as I’m leaving the kitchen, I grab a dessert and head over to get a Schalfly as I’m too good for “beer.” As the nice lady pours it from the keg, I notice that it’s a yellow colored beer and my first thought was that she gave me Budweiser and so I asked her what kind of Schlafly it was, she told me it was Schalfly Heff. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of heffs in the world, but I’ll gladly take it over the local macro products.

Sides view.

As I’m heading over to find a seat, I head to the condiment table to get my normal lemons, as no one ever has the malt vinegar that fried fish calls for, but hark they had malt vinegar! So, I take this opportunity to douse my fish in malt vinegar and since the chips and green beans were kept separated by the to go box, only my fish was vinegared. I’ll call that a win for the to go box.

Now, we go through the task of finding a seat. It was another of those places that had long tables, but these tables had little single seat benches. Well, I sat on two of them, because on was a touch too little for me, but at least this time we didn’t also have to navigate a stroller in this place.

As for my fish, what can I say? It was phenomenal as were the chips and the green beans. This was by far the best fish fry of the season, and quite possibly now the reigning champion. The fish was seasoned and malt vinegary. The chips were fresh and crispy with a nice dusting of parmesan cheese and the green beans were green beans.

mmmm...cake.

After eating all of my fish, my chips and my green beans, I then turned my attention to the red velvet cake I had chosen for myself. Did I mention that this was the first fish fry of the season to offer dessert as a part of the meal instead of an add on option after you’ve seen the cakes? No? Well they were.

I am not a big dessert person, but I do love red velvet cake. My grandmother used to always make one for Christmas. This particular variety of cake holds a very special place in my heart. Now, I’ll say it wasn’t as good as Grandma Mable’s, but I really enjoyed it and I loved being able to have one.

All in all, this was a well done, mostly efficient, and tasty fish fry. I can easily recommend this one to the other vagabond fish fry folks and if you work at a fish fry and you’re reading this, please put some Heinz Malt Vinegar on your condiment table.