The parish tables: the Polish dinner, the parish feast, and the cookbook that is not there

1898 — present · the west-side parishes and the McKinley Avenue house

The Polish dinner as a documented plate: The Polish table's fullest surviving document is a menu. The Skillet, at 2212 McKinley Avenue, is a house the Tribune could already describe in 2005 as "a much-loved restaurant for more than 40 years" when it closed that January — arithmetic that puts its opening before 1965, though its founding year itself was not found — serving a traditional Polish buffet and broasted chicken. The present house, reopened under the name and run as restaurant and caterer, prints its Polish Dinner whole: broasted chicken, Polish sausage, kluski noodles, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet-and-sour cabbage, green beans, and a dinner roll. Its catering house claims "well over 60 years" of service — the house's own count, printed as its claim. The dinner is the Dyngus plate of the first entry with the chicken added and the hall removed: the same sausage, the same noodles, the same cabbage, kept on a menu year-round.

The parishes' own tables: The parishes fed their people in print as well as in halls. St. Casimir's annual Micholaj — the St. Nicholas Eve feast — is recorded in the parish's own descriptions with its menu intact: pierogi, noodles, roast beef, herring, paczkis, and breads, followed by the singing and St. Nicholas's visit to the children. At St. Casimir and St. Adalbert, the Felician sisters' kitchen work — fish fries, bingo lunches, corn-and-sausage roasts — is documented in the diocesan newspaper, Today's Catholic (June 20, 2018), which also preserves this record's one documented dish-level invention, and it is a fusion: for the St. Casimir corn-and-sausage festival, the sisters made Mexican pierogis, a Polish dumpling filled with chorizo sausage, refried beans, and chihuahua-style melting cheese, made to symbolize the parish's Polish and Hispanic cultures coming together. The ingredients are printed because the record prints them; no fuller recipe is given or needed.

The cookbook negative: The brief for this section asked after the church and hall cookbooks as documents — their publication record, not their recipes. The search came back empty at the record reached: no published cookbook of a South Bend Polish, Hungarian, Greek, or Italian parish, and no hall cookbook with a publication record, was found in the catalogs and coverage searched. The ethnic tables are documented instead by menus, fliers, and the diocesan press, as above. The negative is printed at true size; a parish cookbook surfacing in a library catalog is an update-pass item, named in this section's note.

The festival tables, cross-referenced: Two festival tables belong to Events and are pointed to, not retold: the Greek Festival at St. Andrew Greek Orthodox (52455 Ironwood Road), whose numbering puts its first festival in 1976 and whose documented foods are souvlaki, spanakopita, and loukoumathes fried to order; and the Ethnic Festival, established 1974 on Michigan Street, whose food stalls were the city's ethnic tables set out in public for twenty summers. The tables stand in this section's entries; the gatherings are Events'.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune (2005), "Skillet may fire up again" — the McKinley Avenue house as "a much-loved restaurant for more than 40 years" at its January 2005 closing; the traditional Polish buffet and broasted chicken; the reopening plans under the Skillet name.
2. The Skillet Restaurant and Catering, house copy and menu — 2212 McKinley Avenue; the Polish Dinner's composition as printed; the catering claim of "well over 60 years."
3. St. Casimir Parish descriptions (the parish's own record as carried in its parish histories) — the Micholaj feast and its menu: pierogi, noodles, roast beef, herring, paczkis, breads.
4. Today's Catholic (20 June 2018) — the Felician sisters at St. Adalbert and St. Casimir since 1911; the fish fries, bingo lunches, and corn-and-sausage roasts; the Mexican pierogis and their filling, made for the St. Casimir corn-and-sausage festival.
5. Events section of this history — the Greek Festival (first festival 1976 by its numbering; souvlaki, spanakopita, loukoumathes) and the Ethnic Festival (1974, Michigan Street).