1st Friday of Lent

I chose Stonefly Brewing Co. for the inaugural night of my tour for 2 reasons:

1. It's close to my apartment
2. I heard it had some great fish fry

So I sent out the invite and my first four companion tourists joined me to launch the 2011 Fish Fry Tour. To be honest, all I was wanting from this Lent was some good fish fry...but my companions pushed me to go for more - and so here is this blog...title credit goes to (if I remember correctly) a combination of Garrett and Sarah. Whether I'll have the same experience as Julia Roberts --- err, I mean Elizabeth Gilbert...well, that's for all of us to find out along this journey of fish fry, Lenten prayer and sacrifice, and love (we'll see about that last one!).

It was also decided to create a rubric to rank each fish fry that would be a part of this tour...the rubric has several categories rated on a scale of 1 to 5.

• 1 = "I'm never having this fish fry again"
• 3 = "I'd come back w/ friends"
• 5 = "I'd come here by myself to get this".

Stonefly Brewing Co. came strong with their fish fry - with a final score of 4.12. So we'd definitely come back with friends for the fish fry, but probably wouldn't go there by ourselves.

The highest score - was a unanimous vote of 5 around the table in the "other sides offered" category. To say that Stonefly 'brought it' when it comes to sides outside of the standard potato option is an understatement. First, you get a choice of 5 different potato options (which is not included in the particular category, but worth noting). Second, you also get a side of cole slaw, warm home-made apple sauce, and a pickle. Let's just say it was "side heaven".

Overall - the fish scores were positive - all at or above a "3" - and a special shout out goes to having two options (cod and smelt) that were both in-house battered and paired w/ a tasty tartar sauce. Also, Stonefly offers some great vegetarian options for folks who are vegetarian...Stonefly welcomes all to it's fish fry.




I've created a spreadsheet (surprise!) to record the average scores for each category to create an overall score for each fish fry...

But for those historians out there - here's a picture of the first ever fish fry tour score card:

A blessed 1st week of Lent to all - see you next week at Klinger's East!