Check our Calendar for the next date.
Social hour will be at 11:30 AM with lunch served promptly at 12:00 noon. Tickets are now on sale in the Club office for $23.00 per person. In July, we had 325 members and their guests attend the Fish Luncheon.
The traditional fish luncheon
Flyer for 9/28/2007
The last Friday of every odd month, except November when it’s the Friday before Thanksgiving.
Social hour is 11 A.M. to noon. Lunch is noon to 1:30 P.M.
Tickets cost $22 each. Call us at 310-831-2629, during office hours RSVP's are a must.
Our menu hasn’t changed much since the event started in 1964. Every morsel of it is made fresh. It’s a place where our members and guests have attended so regularly they have tables they claim as their own. Tradition runs deep here. The luncheon began as a chance for a dozen local businessmen to meet, forge deals and share a meal. As the lunch’s reputation for huge, family style meals and influential guests grew over the years, our numbers have swelled — one luncheon netted more than 400 — and has evolved into a major networking opportunity for San Pedro’s business, social and political communities.
Political heavyweights such as Councilwoman Janice Hahn and her brother, Mayor James Hahn, Assemblywoman Betty Karnette, our current Mayor Villargosa, come regularly to share a meal with business and community leaders, Ms. Janis Barquist, Esq. of the L.A. City Attorney's office, while campaigning says "This was certainly one of the more fun events that I went to - and the one with the best food, undoubtedly," many of whom advertise in our almanac. But before hundreds of hungry diners gather for one of San Pedro’s oldest, regular social events, the preparation begins. At 5 a.m., the day before a small band of workers begin. Over the next day, the crew will season and cook 175 pounds of swordfish, boil and prepare 80 pounds of pasta for mostaccioli, chop up then boil 20 pounds of tomatoes and do the same to another 50 pounds of mixed vegetables. They’ll skin, dice and boil giant piles of potatoes, unfurl yards of table cloth and carefully lay out an elegant array of 300 table settings, each one perfectly resembling the ones next to it.
The day of the lunch, chaos ensues, but the system stays in place. Last-minute additions by the dozens are guaranteed. So are cancellations. To be safe, our staff always prepares food for 30 more people than they are told will attend. But on the day of the lunch, even that sometimes isn’t enough. At the most recent fish luncheon, 240 people had booked tickets a day before. By the morning of the event 300 had signed up. Last-minute grocery trips and lots of cooking are needed.
Our servers start the meal by bringing out salad. The kitchen looks and sounds like chaos. The clang of metal pots banging against one another fills the air as does a mix of Croatian, English and Spanish, as the crew communicates with one another. Puffs of steam swirl from every direction, water splashes about from as many sources, giant fans hum overhead and the smell of as many different types of food as being served drifts about the air. But the system keeps in place. The already cut ingredients for the salad are tossed by the fistful just as the luncheon begins. The crew finishes cooking the soup just as the salad is served. As the pot holding the soup leaves the stove, a vat holding the noodles for the mostaccioli goes on top of the stove to replace the soup pot. The noodles will be ready exactly at the same time as the crowd finishes its salad and soup. The swordfish steaks (sometimes Salmon) will immediately leave the oven when the pasta is finished.
Everything is designed to be ready exactly when it is ready to be served for optimum flavor and freshness. By the end of the lunch, being stuffed is the norm, being hungry is a sin. "Nobody goes home hungry,"
Daily Breeze 6/1/2006 Article
Daily Breeze - More 4/2/2005 Article
