After two years of trying, I made it to Soul Food Friday, the annual "extra helping" at St. Alphonsus Liquori "Rock"'s Lenten fish fry. St. Alphonsus – you can see it from the Fox or Powell Hall, just at the northern edge of Grand Center – has about the only lunchtime fish fry I know of at the area's churches, and I'd been once a few years ago. But on one Friday of Lent, they add to their menu macaroni and cheese and greens with cornbread.
The basic menu, though, has a wider choice of fish than most, with jack and catfish fillets, as well as tilapia and buffalo. Dinners include spaghetti and coleslaw, onions pickle, bread and a wee slice of pound cake. The mac and cheese and greens with cornbread are each an extra dollar. (Do it.) No beer, just soda and water.
This is generally a pretty quiet fish fry, but Soul Food Friday is always the busiest of the year. I waited 24 minutes from walking in the door to the nice ladies calling my name saying my fish was ready. The soul food extras are served up at a separate station, so diners can get them and then find seats or find seats and fetch them when the fish arrives. I opted for the former, and was hungry enough that the greens served as a first course.
And I'm glad they did. No matter how long they're cooked a mess of greens will never become spinach-soft, but these were very tender and utterly delicious, probably the best I've ever had. No meat in them, of course, but nevertheless well-seasoned, a little oniony, a judicious amount of vinegar, and hot sauce on the tables if that's your style. I found they didn't need it. The cornbread is the real southern stuff, pale and unsweet, a little coarse, a far cry from the delicate restaurant stuff.
Most St. Louisans don't know buffalo fish. It's certainly a local product, a freshwater fish that's found in the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and therefore almost certainly in the Missouri as well. Driving up toward Grafton and beyond, the fish sandwich options nearly always include buffalo. To me, it has more character than catfish, and that's what I chose for lunch. Four large pieces of fish in a cornmeal batter awaited the slow, careful process of eating them. That's because buffalo is extremely bony with long, flexible sewing-pin-sized bones that remain despite the spine and larger bones being removed. Definitely not something to give a rookie eater. (There's a way to make it more-or-less boneless for sandwiches, which can be found in Illinois River taverns and eateries.) Spaghetti wears a tomato sauce with a generous note of green pepper, reminding me of years of potluck dinners, very American homestyle. Coleslaw has a vinegar and oil dressing.
And then there was the remarkable macaroni and cheese. Very cheesy, almost sharp in its cheesiness and nuggets of black pepper bumping things up a notch. Between the greens and the macaroni and cheese, these are the best sides I've found on Cod Squad 2013.
Not expecting the wee slice of pound cake, I'd gotten dessert, and chose a loaf cake, chocolate with a little German-chocolate-style coconut frosting, and then a creamy coconut layer near the bottom of the loaf, very moist. If it's from a commercial bakery, you could have fooled me.
Generous servings – all this and a soda set me back $12. Sorry my Cod Squad partner Martha couldn't join me for this one. She won't be able to do it next year, either. But you should.
St. Alphonsus Liquori Roman Catholic Church
1118 North Grand
314-533-0304