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The Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian seafood-centric feast that dates back to the 1900s. This year’s feast at Bar Enza features staples from executive chef Tony Susi. For Susi, an Italian American, the feast carries profound meaning. It’s something he enjoys sharing with Bostonians and those who flock to the area this time of year. In some r...

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“There's degrees of messiness,” The Bear’s prop master Laura Roeper tells me over the phone from Chicago. “Chris [Storer, the series creator] is like, ‘no, [it has to be] chaotic craziness’... So we’re in the kitchen, and we got to throw spaghetti sauce over everything, because the mess wasn’t big enough for Chris. He goes, ‘no, way more’,” Roeper...

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Growing up, I thought everyone was Italian. Like innocent until proven guilty, you were Italian until proven otherwise. My 10-year-old brain couldn’t comprehend that Italy wasn’t the only other country to exist and people had different traditions than we did. New Jersey Italian is its own kind of culture. If you drop us in Italy, our accents would...

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Season 2 of FX/Hulu’s The Bear featured an intense and emotionally draining episode, a flashback to a Christmas Eve Feast of Seven Fishes meal at the Berzatto house several years prior. Carmy has come home to visit from Denmark. Matriarch Donna Berzatto, expertly portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis, is frantically preparing the dinner, drinking and chain...

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Although Christmas Eve is when children ’round the world wait for the big guy in red to freefall down the chimney, back in the days of old in Southern Italy, December 24 was a time of commemorative waiting for the birth of Jesus Christ. This more holy vigil, or La Vigilia, was observed by abstaining from meat and indulging in what was plentiful in...

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Have you heard of the Italian American Christmas Eve dinner called the Feast of the Seven Fishes? Maybe that season-two episode of The Bear started you thinking about it. Where did it come from exactly? Is this a widespread thing? Could it possibly become your new favorite Dec. 24 tradition?  To answer that third question: It can! And you don't nee...

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For many Italian-American families, the Feast of the Seven Fishes is as synonymous with Christmas as presents under the tree. A Christmas Eve tradition brought by immigrants from Italy in the late 1800s, it has evolved from an effort to abstain from meat into one of the most anticipated celebrations of the year. From its humble Roman Catholic begin...

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South Philly has a new holiday anthem, courtesy of a local clothing store. "If You Give Me Seven Fishes" celebrates the pescatarian spread enjoyed by many Italian-American families on Christmas Eve. The tune was written and recorded by the owners of South Fellini, the Philly-themed clothing shop on East Passyunk, and it comes with its own music vid...

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In a show that joyously traffics in food porn, the Very Special Christmas episode of The Bear oddly features none. Throughout the season 2 flashback episode “Fishes,” the food imagery that exists is often utilitarian, swift, and violent. Meatballs angrily plop into a vat of roiling gravy, lobsters are audibly cracked in half, and a greasy artichoke...

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If you think the holidays call for an extravagant meal to be shared with loved ones, the Feast of the Seven Fishes will not disappoint. This Italian-American culinary celebration occurs every Christmas Eve and involves cooking seven different types of fish and seafood. In the early 1900s, the feast was created as a way for families to partake in th...

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