From fasting to feasting: How Fridays during the Lenten season became days of indulgence

One Friday in early March, chef-owner Hajime Sato curated a feast of seafood dishes at the Clawson Japanese restaurant Sozai.

Every 15 minutes or so, Sato and the restaurant’s tight-knit team of cooks slid small plates and ceramic bowls across the sushi bar, offering a brief spiel about one after the other. Dishes progressed from a bowl of periwinkles, the sweet sea snails glistening in a puddle of mild broth, to torched sashimi to crispy tempura fried prawns to namero, a style of tuna tartare topped with herbaceous wasabi microgreens and a slippery quail egg.

I’d been invited to experience Sozai’s kappo, a chef’s-choice, multicourse tasting menu that spans upwards of four hours at the restaurant’s sushi bar. The occasion was a birthday celebration for my newfound friend Kristi Reeve, of Clawson, whose special day happened to fall on a Lenten Friday — a day when Catholics are instructed to abstain from meat — and whose favorite neighborhood restaurant happens to specialize in sourcing sustainable seafood from across the globe.

Cracking crab claws with my teeth and comparing the buttery flavor profiles of purple uni and monkfish liver was non-concerning for me, a nondenominational Christian. For devout Catholics, the tradition of eating seafood on Fridays during the 40-day Lenten season has been in place since the Middle Ages. It occurred to me that Reeve, who’d converted to Catholicism more than two decades ago and became an active member of her local parish, may have chosen the restaurant in an effort to maintain abstinence from flesh meat for religious reasons.

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The following week, a colleague of the Catholic faith posed a question to members of the Free Press Facebook group Woodward 248, which shares happenings in the southeast Oakland County area. She questioned whether the modern Catholic is losing the meaning behind the meatless Fridays message.

The 40-day period, which this year began Feb. 22 and culminates April 6, represents the 40 days that Jesus Christ fasted in the wilderness.

“Until around the 13th century,” said Dr. Robert Fastiggi, chair of dogmatic theology and Christology at Detroit's Sacred Heart Major Seminary, “it was a whole 40 days of not eating any meat. Gradually, fish was allowed as a substitute because farmers and hard workers found they were getting weak without protein. Over the last few centuries, they decided to have Friday as the day to not have other flesh meat, but fish was allowed.”

Today, fish fries are readily available on Lenten Fridays to meet the demands of Catholics across metro Detroit, and restaurants either centered on seafood or featuring a range of seafood options are plentiful, some capitalizing on the Catholic tradition.

Soon, I became attuned to the press pitches piling up in my inbox for fish fries and seafood specials arriving just in time for Lent — three tiers of caviar options at one seafood restaurant promised to enhance guests’ dining experience this Lenten season.

Establishments like Sozai, where seafood is a staple, can become an oasis for Catholics observing meatless Fridays, but where courses of flavorful meals prepared by notable chefs are free-flowing, indulgent seafood dinners are a far cry from the Biblical scene of Jesus’ fast in the desert.

“I don’t delude myself that that was Lenten fasting,” Reeve said when I asked whether the meatless Friday had any bearing on the restaurant selection for her birthday dinner. “I found a different way to show that spirit of sacrifice and fasting that wasn’t giving up meat that Friday. I didn’t justify it by saying it was a fish-based meal.”

Instead, she said, she carved windows into her day to pray for those facing food insecurity and donated to local food banks.

Tradition vs. true meaning

For generations, families have honored meatless Fridays by attending fish fries hosted by local parishes or pubs. Some have gathered around their own dining tables or made an event of heading to a nearby restaurant for fish and chips and various seafood dinners.

Some Woodward 248 members cited nostalgia as a driving force leading them to fish fries at say, Nancy Whiskey Pub or a nearby Knights of Columbus. The ritual of fried fish sandwiches served with crisp French fries and fellowship with loved ones, they said, have become cornerstones of the occasion.

“There’s beauty in tradition,” said the Rev. Mario Amore, a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit primarily serving at St. Aloysius in downtown Detroit. “But we're always trying to call people beyond just the routine, and into relationship because, ultimately, that's what faith has to be about. If we're just about tradition and ritual without relationship, then we don't have anything. We have to be centered on Christ.”

There’s also a sacrificial pillar that lies at the heart of Lenten Fridays, which commemorate the day Catholics believe Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross.

“Uniting our sufferings on that same day is a way in which we show our love for him,” Amore said, adding that sacrifice should be difficult.

It’s hard to argue that decadent fried fish dinners or all-you-can-eat seafood meals present much of a challenge.

“If you can look at what you're doing and say there's a true sacrifice that’s stretching you, then I think I think you're OK,” Amore said.

Bigger fish to fry

Today’s seafood offerings have evolved from the humble origins of meatless Fridays when fish was an accessible, more affordable source of protein for the lower classes.

“Beef was a luxury then and meat was expensive,” Fastiggi said. "The rich would eat beef, pig, ham or lamb for big feasts. Fish was considered to be more for humanitarian purposes.”

With modern cooking techniques and widely available seasonings, fish dishes with bold flavors can be as sensational as a five-hour kappo dinner at Sozai, and advanced commercialization allows Michigan diners to enjoy wild-caught fish from Alaska or plump oysters from the East Coast.

Today, there are pescatarians who choose to replace meat with fish and seafood as their primary source of protein and, with the rise of environmental concerns associated with cattle farming and beef processing, fish and seafood — when sourced ethically — have become sustainable alternatives to potentially harmful meat products.

Still, “there are ways of keeping the spirit of Lent on Fridays by having beautiful, delicious seafood,” Fastiggi said, suggesting perhaps eating a lean lunch. “I’m not against feasting, we just have to think of the purpose of these sacrifices and do something to maintain the spirit. I don’t want to begrudge restaurant owners of trying to cater to people, but it’s the responsibility of the people having the big meal to understand what the purpose of abstaining is.”

Amore recalled a friend who abstains from seasonings and condiments and proposed small acts like avoiding drawn butter with crab legs during a seafood boil.

“That's where the sacrifice comes in. This longing that I have for butter or for salt, in a small way, kind of puts me in a mode to be able to experience the longing that I have for Christ in my life,” he said.

Business of fish

With more than 1 million Catholic residents over six counties in southeast Michigan, the opportunity for restaurants to capitalize on Lenten Fridays is immense.

The sales tactic dates to the inception of the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish Sandwich. As history has it, the multinational fast-food chain’s signature fish sandwich was established during Lent in the early 1960s by an Ohio franchise owner looking to boost sales. The sandwich successfully salvaged the owner’s business and remains a go-to among the Catholic community during the Lenten season.

Local seafood restaurants, with their menus already teeming with fish and crustaceans, are poised for success on Lenten Fridays.

“At this point, there’s an expectation of all fish and seafood restaurants to offer something on Fridays during Lent,” said Eli Boyer. As owner of the Ferndale seafood restaurant Voyager, Boyer and his team have offered a range of fried fish dishes sought after by the Catholic community over the past several years.

This year, Voyager’s Fish Frydays have featured Alaskan halibut fish and chips, fried baby octopus and a fried fish sandwich. At Iggy’s Eggies, the downtown Detroit walk-up window for breakfast sandwiches, also owned by Boyer, welcomed The Impostor on Ash Wednesday, a plant-based rendition of a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich.

“Your guests are looking for it and you’ve got to be responsive from time to time, so we’re just filling that demand," Boyer said.

Boyer said the fried fish offerings at Voyager have dominated sales every Friday night during the Lenten season and The Impostor is taking off.

At Hazel’s in Birmingham, owner Emmele Herrold has witnessed a similar appeal for the restaurant’s fried fish offerings during the Lenten season.

“We have everything — there’s grilled salmon with fresh mango salsa, and other healthy fish dishes, but that’s not what we sell more of during Lent,” she said. “It’s always fish and chips.”

Herrold said she finds herself doubling the restaurant’s cod orders for weekends to support the desires of diners looking to indulge “while still following the rules.”

“Our Fridays are pretty busy all year round — Saturdays are usually busier — but during Lent, Fridays are expected to be the busiest night of the week.”

From a business perspective, Boyer said Voyager aligns its fried fish offerings with Lenten Fridays the way it would any other special. From a moral perspective, though, that is the extent of his comfort capitalizing on a faith-based tradition.

“We’ve always stopped short of making it an event,” said Boyer, who is of the Jewish faith. “I think that should be saved for someone who is of the faith or a venue that is of the faith or has a history of it. It’s not a comfort zone for me to do that.”

For Keri Tarrant, character/virtue instructor at Cornerstone Schools in Detroit, the onus is on those of the Catholic faith to discern meals that honor the sacrificial pillar of Lenten Fridays, not on the restaurant owners aiming to provide appropriate foods for the occasion.

“Restaurants are an economic enterprise,” she said. “We live in a capitalistic society where you're not going to be able to tell people not to cater you, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, so long as you're keeping your own principles and doing it in the ethical way.”

Tarrant said she encourages those of the faith to develop a personal relationship with God and to keep an element of sacrifice, generosity, prayer and mercy at the center of their Lenten fasting and abstinence.

“Every person has to make their own decisions, but the whole reason of doing this is not just to check a box,” Tarrant said. “It's to have growth, and to have growth you have to have honesty with yourself. If you're just going to restaurants that are targeting Catholics to have stone crab and every dessert you want, then you're missing the whole point.”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lenten fish fry on Fridays is far cry from fasting history