The Great Westmoreland County Fish Fry Bracket: Everything You Need to Know

Voting is open. Here’s what this is, who we are, how it works, and how you can get involved.

Last week, we asked a simple question on our Facebook page: Where is the best fish fry in Westmoreland County?

Hundreds of you showed up to nominate your favorites, tagging your friends, arguing in the comments, and rallying your communities to make sure your fish fry got recognized.

This is where we landed:

32 fish fries. 4 divisions. Weekly elimination. One champion.

Here’s everything you need to know...

The Bracket

We divided the bracket into four divisions of 8 entries each, seeded by your nominations:

Fire Hall Division — Norvelt VFD, Bovard Fire Hall, Youngstown Whitney Fireman’s Club, Lloydsville VFD, Mutual VFD, Madison Fire, North Irwin Fire, and Manor Fire Department.

Church Division — St. Bruno’s, St. Raymond of the Mountains, Community Church, Our Lady of Grace, St. Barbara’s (Harrison City), St. John’s Catholic Church (Scottdale), Faith Global Methodist Church, and Sacred Heart Church (Jeannette).

Miscellaneous Division — Lower Burrell American Legion Post 868, Export Moose, Export Italian American Club, FOE 01188 Latrobe Eagles, Irwin Moose, Mt. Pleasant American Legion, VFW Post 3414 Latrobe, and West Newton Moose. Legions, Moose lodges, Eagles, VFWs — if it’s not a fire hall, church, or restaurant, it’s in here.

Restaurant Division — Keith’s Catering, Millie’s (Yukon), Bubba’s (Greensburg), Angelo’s Cucina, Cafe 993, Marino’s American Eatery, 5.1.5 Cookhouse, and Joe’s Store. Local restaurants only. No chains allowed.

Each division will crown its own champion. Then the four division winners will go head to head and crown a winner of it all.

How Voting Works

Official voting will be conducted on the Greensburg Times website moving forward.

Each week, you’ll see the current matchups. Pick the fish fry you think is better. That’s it. Voting is open all week, and results are posted each Friday when the next round goes live.

This is a straight popularity contest. We’re not pretending otherwise. The most popular fish fry wins. If your favorite is going to survive, it’s because you voted — and because you got your friends, your family, your neighbors, and your entire fish fry community to vote too.

The magic of the fish fry is one part good fish and one part community, and to win this you are going to have to have both.

Having trouble signing in? We’re working on adding more login options. In the meantime, if you’re having issues, reach out to us on Facebook and we’ll help you out.

Who We Are (and Why We’re Doing This)

The Greensburg Times is a small group of people who live in Westmoreland County. We started this as a side project because we noticed something: there’s a lot of important information about our local communities that’s surprisingly hard to find. Event listings buried in Facebook groups. Government budgets and meeting minutes scattered across outdated websites. Local news mixed in with so much noise that you can’t find what you’re actually looking for.

So we built greensburgtimes.com to try to make some of that easier. If you click around the site, you’ll find local events, government information, community resources — things we think people should be able to see without digging through ten different places or outdated websites.

That’s the serious part. The less serious part is that we also love fun, good food, and community. And we find both our local fish fry culture and local social club culture fascinating.

If you don’t travel much outside of western Pennsylvania, you might take fish fries for granted. But the sheer number of community fish fries in Westmoreland County alone — we’re talking over 100 — is pretty unusual. The combination of volunteer fire departments, churches, social clubs, VFWs, Moose lodges, and American Legions, all putting on their own fish fry every Friday during Lent, is something that’s genuinely unique to this region. It’s a real cultural thing, and we think it deserves to be celebrated.

That’s what this is. A celebration. We’re doing this for fun. We wanted to see what would happen, and what happened is that hundreds of people got really excited really fast, and now here we are.

We’re Coming to Eat Your Fish Sandwiches

Here’s the other part of this project that we’re excited about.

Separate from the bracket and the voting, we’re going to spend this Lenten season traveling around Westmoreland County eating as many fish sandwiches as we can. We’ll be posting reviews, photos, videos, and stories about the places we visit and the people we meet.

The bracket is the people’s choice — it’s your vote, your popularity contest, your community flexing its numbers. Our editorial coverage is a different thing. We’re going to go wherever the interesting stories are. If everyone’s talking about a particular matchup, we might go taste both. If we hear about a tiny fire hall doing something incredible that nobody knows about, that’s our story. We’re chasing whatever’s most fun and interesting.

We can’t eat all 100+. (We wish.) So if you want us to come to yours, tell us. Why should we pick yours over the many others?

Want Your Fish Fry Featured?

If you’re running a fish fry — or you’re a member of a community that runs one — and you want us to come check it out, reach out to us.

A feature could mean a lot of different things. Maybe we just swing by, try the sandwich, and post a quick review. Or maybe you’ve got a great story to tell — the cooks who’ve been doing this for 30 years, the recipe that’s been passed down, the community that rallies around it every Friday — and you’d like us to do a more in-depth piece. We’re open to all of it.

Some of you have already made your case just through the sheer volume of support your communities showed during nominations. We noticed. We’ve already been having a lot of fun watching communities come together over this.

But if you really want us there, don’t be shy. Tell us. Tell us why yours is the one we gotta try. Message us on Facebook or email us at the Greensburg Times. We’ll do our best to get to as many places as we can.

What Does the Winner Get?

Good question. The honest answer: to be determined, but we’re working on it.

Here’s what we know so far: it might involve a polka band. We’re exploring the idea of showing up at the winning fish fry on Good Friday with a live polka band to celebrate. We’ve also been kicking around the idea of making an official Fish Fry Bracket championship t-shirt and raising money to put together a real prize for the winner.

If you have strong ideas about what the champion should win, we’re all ears. The only criteria: it has to be fun. Message us with your ideas. The more creative, the better.

“But My Fish Fry Didn’t Make the Bracket!”

The bracket has 32 spots and there are over 100 fish fries in Westmoreland County. We had to draw the line somewhere, and we drew it at the top vote-getters from the nomination round. That means a lot of great fish fries didn’t make the cut — not because they aren’t good, but because there are just so many.

Two things about that:

First, we are building out the most complete fish fry map and list for Westmoreland County that we can. If your fish fry isn’t on it yet, it will be. We’re updating it every week. If we’re missing yours, tell us.

Second, we’re working on adding a write-in / redemption vote. If your fish fry got left out, or if your pick loses in a given week, there will be a way for you to tell us we got it wrong. We’ll be tracking that storyline throughout the bracket. Stay tuned — more details coming soon.

This Week’s Giveaway

Last week, we said anyone who liked and shared our post would be entered to win a free fish sandwich. We picked a winner: congratulations to Janice Potts! DM us on Facebook to claim your prize.

We’re doing it again this week. Like this post. Share it. You’re entered to win a free fish sandwich. We’ll announce the winner next Friday. Simple as that.

Go Vote

The bracket is live. Voting is open. Your fish fry needs you.

Go to greensburgtimes.com, sign in, and vote. Then share this with everyone you know.

This is just getting started.

The Greensburg Times is a community project based in Westmoreland County, PA. We cover local events, government, community news, and apparently fish fries now. Find us at greensburgtimes.com and on Facebook.