Lake Michigan yellow perch fillets, cornmeal-dredged, deep-fried, served with tartar, lemon and rye: a Friday-fish-fry standard at South Side taverns and German halls.
Lake Michigan yellow perch was the cheap workingman's fish in Chicago through the 19th and 20th centuries: pulled from the lake by Polish and Croatian commercial fishermen, fried at Friday-night fish fries in Bridgeport, Pullman and Roseland taverns. Commercial perch fishing in Lake Michigan collapsed in the late 1990s under invasive-mussel pressure on the food chain; the fillets on Chicago menus today are mostly Canadian-caught from Lake Erie and the Saskatchewan lakes. Calumet Fisheries on 95th Street, smoking chubs since 1948, is the smokehouse reference; Edgebrook's Superdawg and South Side taverns still serve Friday perch with rye, tartar, lemon and a beer.
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