First Posted: 7/22/2014
The potato pancakes are a big deal for the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Dupont, or so says Jim Ziobro, the new games chairman for the annual bazaar starting July 31.
“They’ve been selling them for years,” said Ziobro. “I’m 49 and I’ve been been going since I was a kid. That’s 4o-plus years, if not longer.”
The process to make the potato pancakes is not as simple as some may think.
According to Ziobro, the cooks use up to two tons of potatoes for the pancakes, or 80 50-pound bags of potatoes, and up to 150 gallons of oil.
Ziobro said the parking garage of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church serves as a kitchen for the cooks.
“It’s a three- to four-car garage,” said Ziobro. “The upper end of garage, where the window is, is where they cook, peel, soak potatoes, washing them and other prep work. They do that in the hall and basement of the church which is in close proximity of the garage.”
Although the cooks spend all evening prepping the pancakes the night before the bazaar opens, Ziobro said production of the pancakes actually begins days before the bazaar opens. Ziobro said he wouldn’t be surprised if production has already started by now.
“They have six to eight guys coming in at 5 a.m. peeling and mashing potatoes,” said Ziobro. “Prep work starts early They come in early morning hours every day of the week of the picnic. They’ll probably start stuff this weekend, but definitely by Monday (July 28) they’re preparing stuff and everything is made fresh.”
Ziobro said that there are at least a dozen people working the potato pancake stand, and the demand for the pancakes is so great that people will begin lining up over an hour before the bazaar even opens.
He also said that some people will skip Saturday evening’s Mass on the bazaar’s last day to get their hands on the famous pancakes.
“Last year over the three nights they sold 21,300 pancakes,” said Ziobro. “People skip church to get in line for pancakes.”
According to Ziobro, the workers of the pancake stand are not allowed to snack on pancakes for free, either.
“If they want pancakes, they have to get in line like everyone else,” he said.
As popular as the potato pancakes are, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church bazaar offers other foods such as pierogies and piggies.
Ziobro said that nothing the bazaar sells is frozen. He said it’s an “ethnic picnic” so everything sold there is made fresh.
The bazaar tends to run out of products, something that Ziobro said will hopefully not happen this year. He said people sometimes ask for more than what they can normally eat in one sitting, which puts a strain on supplies.
“Everything typically sells out every night,” said Ziobro. “They allow so much for each night, and pretty much everything sells out. They make 30,000 pierogies and at the end of the night there’s nothing left.
“One night last year they tried putting a limit on the stuff people were ordering. People would come with an oven roaster and ask for them to fill it (with piggies or pierogies) and ask how much they owed. People would come at night time looking for food and some stuff were sold out already.”
The Sacred Heart of Jesus Church’s annual bazaar will run from 6 to 11 p.m. Thursday, July 31 and Friday, Aug. 1 and from 5-11 p.m. Saturday Aug. 2.
