PHOTO COURTESY OF COMMUNITY KITCHEN PITTSBURGH

There are plenty of fish in the sea – and fish fries in Pittsburgh. Here’s a map to help you navigate them all during the Lenten season.

One of these, Community Kitchen Pittsburgh’s fish fry, last year netted $100,000 over seven weeks. 

Executive director Jennifer Flanagan hopes 2024 will be just as bountiful for Hazelwood’s nonprofit culinary training center. Meals will be available for pick-up or onsite dining at 107 Flowers Ave. from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every Friday from Feb. 16 through March 29. 

The menu will be posted on the organization’s website on Feb. 11. 

For the past six years, the facility’s been reeling in customers with big, hand-battered fish sandwiches and platters, sides ranging from coleslaw and fries to haluski, pierogies and beer from Hazel Grove Brewing. The new business is opening in the neighborhood this spring right down the street from a building housing three breweries.  

Leftover food from the fish fry will be donated to local shelters each Friday evening and tips made during the event will go into the school’s Student Assistance Fund, which helps participants cover rent, utilities or emergency financial situations.  

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, CKP launched its first food truck. The mobile classroom serves a limited menu of breakfast and lunch items from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on Lytle Street at Hazelwood Green. During the third week of Lent, it will start serving fish sandwiches. The vehicle will make the rounds to local festivals and events this summer.

Flanagan estimates they sell between 800 to 1,000 pieces of fish each year, with students involved in all aspects of the process — from prepping the grub and waiting on customers to changing the fryer oil.

In addition to feeding hungry mouths and teaching the students the ins and outs of food service, the fish fry brings people into CKP’s eatery, Bloom Cafe.

“We aren’t a busy restaurant,” Flanagan says. “This is the one time a year we can show students what that’s like. It helps people figure out what they are suited to.”