Community Kitchen Pittsburgh’s fish fry is one of the most popular in the region, known for its homemade everything, from the battered haddock to the tartar sauce.
But beyond the appeal of homemade sides and sauces, Community Kitchen has a very good reason to go to the extra trouble: Their fish fry is also job training for the culinary students the organization serves, and scratch cooking gives students more opportunities to practice their skills.
“We train about 100 people a year and we work with people overcoming barriers to employment,” said executive director Jen Flanagan. She founded the organization in 2013. “Some people might be coming out of incarceration or otherwise justice-impacted. We have people that are transitioning from homelessness. We have people who dropped out of high school. We have people that are in poverty.”
The fish fry is Community Kitchen Pittsburgh’s biggest annual fundraiser, and it also offers the organization’s culinary students a different kind of experience. Typically, the students work and train behind the scenes, learning culinary skills by producing about 2,000 meals per day for Community Kitchen’s several social enterprise business lines, including school lunches, after-school programs, shelters and nonprofits. But the fish fry is an opportunity for students to meet community members in public-facing roles and practice à la carte preparation.
Community Kitchen’s executive chef Bruce Harris grew up in the Hill District, where he graduated from Pittsburgh Public’s Schenley High School and the University of Pittsburgh. While his culinary influences include soul food, Italian cuisine and traditional French cooking technique, he grew up going to church fish fries, including at his home church, a Pentecostal congregation in East Liberty.
“Growing up here, I never thought twice about a fish fry,” Harris says. “And then when I went to California, my first year there … I was like, ‘It’s Lent. Someone has to be frying fish here.’ And they’re like, ‘No, we don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And it was then that I learned that it is a Pittsburgh tradition.”
On Wednesday, March 5, 90.5 WESA visited Community Kitchen Pittsburgh for the organization’s test run in advance of the season’s first fish fry for the public. Students sliced onions for haluski, whisked sauce for fresh-cut coleslaw, dipped haddock filets in seasoned flour before battering and dropping them — carefully — in the fryer.
As they worked, Harris watched over their shoulders: This batch is too light. This batch is too dark. What we’re looking for is golden brown, flaky inside, crispy outside. Salt the fries on the tray when they come out of the fryer. Taste what you’ve made.
When the fish fry and all the sides were ready, students and staff gathered for their daily “family meal,” piling plates with haluski, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, pierogies, and smearing the as-instructed flaky, crispy, golden brown haddock with scratch-made tartar sauce — whose recipe Harris would not reveal.
“We have some fresh herbs that go in. And the only other ingredient I’ll share is you may see a caper floating around,” Harris said. “Possibly. I’m not sharing anything else.”
The Community Kitchen Pittsburgh fish fry in Hazelwood serves more than 500 people every Friday during the Lenten season, including Good Friday, from March 7 to April 18, 2025. Tips go to support their student assistance fund, which are immediate funds the organization can use for emergencies for their students.
