Church fish fries are a feast, a reunion, a tradition. Here's how one team of volunteers pulls it off.

Mark Krier arrives at the St. Sebastian Catholic School cafeteria hours before its kitchen becomes a hive of activity and hungry diners start to arrive.

He thrives on days like this.

Although he prefers to spread credit around, Krier is about to spend nearly nine hours at the helm of a tradition fundamental to Wisconsin's identity.

The Friday fish fry. Specifically the kind in a Catholic church basement.

St. Sebastian Parish, in the Washington Heights neighborhood, runs one of the largest and longest-running fish fries of its kind in the Milwaukee area. Families and retirees, neighbors and school alumni, all gather to volunteer and eat and socialize.

The fish fry on March 1 was always going to be a big deal. It was St. Seb’s only sit-down dinner of Lent, the 40-day period before Easter in which Catholics refrain from meat on Fridays. The church serves dine-in and carryout meals the first Friday of each month, October through May. The exception is Lent, when there is carryout each week.

Krier, a retired electronic technician for GE HealthCare, has worked more than 250 fish fries over more than two decades. Some in his crew of volunteers have been there longer. The success of the production — turning a school cafeteria into a restaurant, producing hundreds of meals, wrangling about 50 adult volunteers and 30 kid servers — relies on Krier and people like him.

The St. Seb's crew is part of a network of unsung heroes that make church fish fries a staple across the state. They raise money for their churches while nurturing a sense of community.

The fish fry is “like coming home,” says Maria Watson, parish development director at St. Sebastian.

Some church fish fries never resumed after the COVID pandemic. For those that did, it has taken a while to hit their stride. Now, though, diners are returning to places like St. Sebastian with enthusiasm.

Drawn by the appeal of an easy meatless meal for the family, or the warmth and camaraderie that comes with shared tables, or the desire for deep-fried cod on Fridays that seems to pass down generations, there is something about a classic church fish fry that has enduring appeal.

More: 6 reader-favorite fish fries in the Milwaukee area that had our dining critic hooked

One volunteer made six pages of instructions for himself

It’s 12:30 p.m., four hours before the first diners will be seated, and students at the parish school are still eating lunch. But Krier can’t waste time. He is pushing shelving units and metal carts around a small supply closet at the back of the cafeteria, preparing to move into the cafeteria when the kids move out.

“We’re expecting a massive crowd tonight,” Krier says.

For the last sit-down meal, he ordered about 600 pounds of fish. This week, it was more than 700.

The biggest challenge each week is making sure there are enough volunteers. Krier is counting plastic container lids when a text comes into his phone. Then another, almost on top of the first.

It’s his fellow organizers.

“I hate getting these texts on Fridays. It’s like, now who’s sick?” Krier says.

Yet another text arrives. Every message is disruptive and hard to take at what feels like the last minute. “Oh no, now we lost another person,” he says.

There’s no time to dwell on it. The kids and lunch staff are out. Krier hustles in.

“Once we get going, we’ve got to go as fast as we can. There’s just so much to do,” says Dave Hubka, a school dad who helps with setup. He carries a list of tasks he typed out for his shift, so he doesn't forget anything. It’s six pages of detailed instructions, marked with the time each needs to happen.

Krier has heard the fish fry described as a well-oiled machine, beautiful madness and organized chaos. For him — a guy who spends 40 hours a week preparing for and working the fish fry — it’s just a way of life.

Dedicated volunteers are the secret to fish fry's longevity

Like Hubka, the volunteers know their roles. The setup crew, the dinner crew, the cleanup crew –— they’re all integral.

There’s Dean Lex, likely the longest-serving volunteer, at 28 years. He handles the deep fryer, where hand-cut filets go after being dunked in batter.

Lex isn’t even a St. Sebastian parishioner anymore, but his New Berlin church doesn’t have a fish fry, and he loves the tradition and shared dedication of the volunteers too much to give it up.

“The secret sauce is the people in the red shirts,” he says.

There’s Lisa Weger and Liz Martin, volunteer coordinators past and present, who run the back and the front of the house. As she stirs large pots of shrimp chowder on the stove, Martin says she’s not too worried about being short workers.

“It’s just par for the course,” she says. “It’s still going to get done. We may just have to do a little more than what we do normally.”

A quick call upstairs, and Watson, along with a handful of eighth-graders, head to the cafeteria and begin helping fill any needs.

Volunteer Robin Gorman readies the dining room and stays out of the kitchen. She says she’s going up north next month but might wait to leave until after her shift at St. Seb's. That’s common among the regular volunteers — they schedule vacations around fish fries.

The decor this month is green for St. Patrick’s Day. As Gorman places beer bottles in metal ice buckets — Conway’s Irish Ale, appropriately — the sound of the school band practicing floats down the hallway.

This is a way for Gorman to stay connected to the school her five children attended. It’s great to see kids from her children’s classes who are now adults themselves, and parents she knew from back then. She’s known Krier since their kids were in class together. He’s the backbone of the entire operation, she says.

“This fish fry would fall apart without Mark,” she says.

Krier, 64, almost never stops moving. He muscles large refrigerators and big shelving units into new spots in the kitchen, opening cans of potatoes one moment and washing pans the next. His tasks are rote at this point, and his movements are well-practiced and smooth.

How long will he do this?

“‘Til I can’t,” he says, while kneeling on the floor, taping rolls of paper in front of the fryers to prevent people from slipping on spattered oil.

He can be direct in his instructions to kitchen volunteers, but that’s just for efficiency. He’s having fun. The kitchen crew members are all friends, and they joke and laugh as they work, fueled by Coca-Cola in white plastic cups that are refilled time and again.

By 3:15 p.m., Gorman asks Krier if he’s eaten his sandwich yet. No, he says, he hasn’t. That’s right: Krier fuels himself to work a fish fry not with fish, but with a sandwich. Fish will come at the end of the night, as a reward.

Eventually, he sits down for exactly five minutes with Martin and Weger. He gives Martin half of his lobster salad sub, while Weger has some soup. They have a narrow window to eat. Soon, a group of about 30 Fry Kids will arrive and pull on bright yellow shirts. They’re fourth- through eighth-graders who act as servers, table bussers and place setters.

When a delivery person walks in with cheese pizza for the Fry Kids, Krier is off again. Weger and Martin take a few more moments to finish their food.

The fish fry is a great place to meet friends, they say. At her first St. Sebastian fish fry, Martin met a woman who is now her closest friend and her emergency contact. Weger, in the church choir, recently encouraged a single choir member to stop by the fish fry and sit at a table with strangers — maybe he’d meet someone.

At 4:03 p.m., word comes that people are lining up in the hallway. Dinner won’t begin until 4:30.

Diners feel like they're showing up at a reunion

Mary Brooks of Milwaukee and her friend, Kathy Kent, are first in line. They come to each dine-in night and like to get to the church early for a good parking spot.

“It is very good food. If it wasn’t good, we wouldn’t be here,” says Brooks, a fish fry fan who also likes that she’s supporting the parish.

The hustle and bustle of the setup is nothing compared to the action come 4:30 p.m., with hostesses seating diners at long cafeteria tables and Fry Kids running order slips to the kitchen. In a flash, the lines for dine-in and carryout get long, extending up the stairs and into a lobby.

Volunteer Katie Sanders pushes around a cart, selling beer to people who are waiting. She announces to the carryout line: “Happy Friday everyone. Lenten Fish Fry, so it’s a little bonkers today. Would you like a beverage while you’re waiting?” Several take her up on the offer.

On this mild Friday evening, there are families with kids, groups of teens, middle-aged couples, retirees out with friends. One gray-haired man is especially prepared: He heads to the carryout line with a styrofoam cooler in hand.

By 5:30 p.m., volunteer Casey Wojtal is greeting a steady stream of customers in the parking lot and directing them to the right lines. Usually she’s indoors managing the Fry Kids. But some traffic control was needed. Thirty minutes ago, the line extended halfway into the parking lot.

“In the three years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen it this busy,” Wojtal says.

What’s drawing all these people, Wojtal says, is that a church fish fry isn’t just a meal.

“You’re part of the neighborhood here; you’re not at a business,” she says. “It’s more of a social gathering than if I were to go out with my family to a restaurant.”

Laura and Greg Marshall and their four daughters, ages 10 to 18, trekked from Mequon to Washington Heights after reading about St. Seb's in Milwaukee Magazine. The Marshall parents grew up going to fish fries and wanted to share the experience with their girls.

“It’s like showing up at a family reunion where you don’t know anybody but you’re still welcome,” Greg says.

Lisa and Bob Manier of Wauwatosa also want to instill a love of fish fries in their children, Archie, 2, and Judy, 6 months. For decades, fish fries have offered a sense of comfort, community and tradition, Bob says. They’re quintessential to Wisconsin. He wants to “keep that story alive” in his own family.

“It’s something that’s been passed down from generations before us,” he says. “We want to carry it on.”

Bob is more than just a casual fish fry-goer. Ten years ago, when he lived in Madison, he kept a spreadsheet in which he rated each fish fry he visited according to several criteria: atmosphere, old fashioned (the drink, not the style), table wait time, soup/salad/slaw, bread, sides, fish.

The meal at St. Sebastian was pretty good, he says, handing Lisa and Archie a dollar to pick out something from the dessert table.

Ali and Jenny Pervaiz, seated near the salad bar with their four young children, are school parents who try to make it to every dine-in night. The first time they came, they sat next to two brothers, ages 82 and 85, who started chatting with the family — “somebody you thought you never thought you’d have a conversation with,” Ali says.

Soon, a familiar couple walks into the cafeteria. Dana and Steve Biasi are regular volunteers, but this Friday they're taking Steve’s sister out for her birthday. And where else would they go on a Friday night?

Martin, the volunteer coordinator, spots the Biasis at a table. She gasps.

“I’m sorry, he does not belong here, and neither do you!” Martin says with a laugh. “He’s our regular fries fryer. And she’s my salad bar queen. You’re caught!”

Martin relays the story to the guys in the kitchen. Jeff Sobczak, Steve Biasi’s usual partner in frying the french fries, laughs and says he’s never going to let them live this down.

By 6:10, Krier's apron is covered in flour. His cheeks are red. By now, the pace usually starts slowing down. But it’s been nonstop in the kitchen, and out in the parking lot. Wojtal says it feels like the busiest night in years.

Has it felt that way for Krier? “I’m not going to say that she’s not right,” he says.

Krier has remained in motion for hours, still jumping in to help with any task. He picks up a tray of freshly fried fish and empties it into metal serving baskets. Then he picks up a tray of battered fish and sets filets in the fryer.

Into the churn of action enters the Rev. Peter Patrick Kimani, the pastor of St. Sebastian, who warmly claps parishioners on the back and says hello to families around him.

He notes that Krier's children long ago graduated from the school, but still, “He’s here doing it with passion.” On Saturday, Krier will be back at the church, doing inventory and placing orders for the next week. “That passion is beyond anything,” Kimani says.

It takes 'a lot of love and effort' week to week

Around 7 p.m., Dan Schley, wife Barb Haig and her brother Andy Haig are heading out, full of fish and happy — really.

“Oh, it’s never any good,” Schley jokes to Wojtal near the doors. "I’ll come back next time to see if it’s better.”

Andy Haig lives in Vermont and planned his trip to Milwaukee around tonight’s fish fry. He can’t get this in New England.

“In Wisconsin, fish fry is like an Olympic event,” he says.

Schley volunteered alongside Krier for 15 years. He’s seen his calm, dedicated leadership style firsthand. He understands the magic of this event.

“The entire community is here in the church basement, sitting in the cafeteria, on little stools that are not that comfortable, and they’re having a ball,” he says.

Just 15 minutes before the dinner is set to conclude, the line has finally dissipated. At the hostess stand, three volunteers take a moment to breathe. So many new families came tonight, they say.

Martin comes over with a tray of beers. “Best part of the night,” she says, and the women toast each other with their plastic cups.

Eventually, volunteers from the dinner crew finish up, and the cleaning crew arrives, and everyone begins to fill their plates.

The consensus: It was the busiest night in anyone’s memory. Later, Krier would get final numbers: 970 meals served — or 675 pounds of fish — over three hours. St. Seb's typically serves 700 to 800 dinners on dine-in nights.

Sobczak, who fries the french fries, sits down and says everybody’s exhausted, “but flying high.” He praises Krier for ordering and planning this big night perfectly: just the right amount of fish was thawed and cut and fried.

“If you don’t have someone like a Mark, you can’t do this. He’s the heartbeat of the whole thing,” Sobczak says. “What it takes to keep this thing rolling is a lot of love and effort, honestly. I don’t know how else you can do it if you didn’t love it.”

Just after 8 p.m., Krier emerges from the kitchen and Martin gives him a hug. Krier hasn’t sat down since he ate part of his lobster salad sandwich. Soon he will, he says. But first: a beer with Martin. They grab two Conway’s Irish Ales and clink the bottles together.

Martin thinks about the bond among the volunteers and tears up. “Every single one of these people that come together to make it happen — it means a lot.”

The two are invigorated, Martin says, and already excited for the next fish fry.

They were short-staffed, and Krier was stressed about that. To Martin, it was always going to work out. It had to.

“We know that we worked our tails off to get people here, to get people in the spots that they need to be in, and we pulled it off,” she says. “Again. Week after week.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin's classic fish fry has a home at Milwaukee Catholic parish