Carryout or dine-in: Community suppers returning to Fox Valley churches

Once again, the ingredients are falling in place for residents to enjoy the camaraderie and cost savings of attending a monthly community supper event at a local church.

This type of ministry at our area churches took hold during the recession in 2008 when so many people were out of work. Today, the key factors making a free community dinner appealing would be all of us coming out from under a pandemic and facing staggering inflation.

United Methodist Church of Geneva halted its Third Tuesday suppers a couple of years before the pandemic struck. After 10 years of service, it gave its volunteers a needed break and directed efforts to other projects.

Some churches kept at it with community suppers as best they could during the pandemic. It created some challenges, a reality St. Charles Episcopal Church faced when providing free spaghetti dinners from 4 to 6 p.m. on the last Sunday of each month.

But members of the St. Charles East High School National Honors Society came to the rescue to help the church package dinners to go for patrons to pick up at a drive-through in the church parking lot at 994 N. Fifth Ave. School advisor Alan Evans has helped the church coordinate volunteers for the Sunday evening events.

Before the pandemic, these students helped wait tables inside the church during the spaghetti dinners, so they were familiar with the routine.

The church plans to stick with the drive-through-only concept for the time being.

"I do not see going to indoor dinners until next fall at the earliest," said head chef Dallas Heikkinen. "Summer is always a hard time to get volunteers, and serving indoors requires more volunteers."

Fox Valley Presbyterian Church in Geneva changed its community supper event from Fridays to 4 to 6 p.m. on the second Sunday of each month. It will be a takeout setup with dine-in options, with the next event Sunday, March 13.

"Prior to COVID, we partnered with St. Mark's in St. Charles and took turns every other month, and then as the pandemic progressed, St. Mark's decided to stop the ministry, and we decided to hold off on the dinners for a time," said Fox Valley Presbyterian associate pastor Michelle Hwang. "We are really excited to come back with the dinners because there is always a need for it."

Bethany Lutheran in Batavia holds its community supper from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on the last Friday of each month. It will offer a dine-in or takeout service with no restrictions.

"We stopped providing the dinners for a period of time because we just didn't have the resources," said Darlene Hutchens, church office administrator. "We tried a couple of drive-through events, but those were difficult as well."

St. Patrick Church in St. Charles has consistently offered the Loaves and Fishes free community supper from 5 to 7 p.m. on the third Monday of the month as a dine-in event in the Father Carse room of the downtown church.

Similarly, the Elburn Lions continue to host a free spaghetti dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of each month at its clubhouse in Lions Park.

An empty Goose

It can be said with much certainty that plenty of people, especially in St. Charles, have deeper loyalty and memories toward the Blue Goose Market store on First Street than I might.

Still, it was my grocery store of choice when I lived near it in St. Charles 40 years ago. And longtime employees, the late Witold "Pich" Pichik and his son David Pichik have been friends of our family.

Regardless of how long Blue Goose had been part of one's life, it is difficult to see it now sitting empty and its building awaiting, at this point, an uncertain future.

Blue Goose was a business operation that, as recently as the early 1990s, owner Dave Lencioni envisioned possibly expanding to a second location. A spot in Elburn was discussed for some time, or one east of downtown St. Charles in the general area that now houses Country House restaurant, some office spaces and a motel along Fabyan Parkway.

At the time, Blue Goose was a small grocery store along Illinois Street, roughly where the Brunch Café and Sterling Bank sit now.

When talk about a modern First Street makeover began to take hold in St. Charles, ideas for Blue Goose were altered. Much of the First Street project relied on Lencioni to agree to raze his current site and become a key element in the redevelopment design - tying it all together with a Blue Goose move from its small location to becoming a more modern site that would anchor the entire concept.

Modern shopping habits and growing competition from everywhere under the sun from places like Walmart, Target and Meijer, let alone Jewel and upscale places like Fresh Market and Trader Joe's, simply began to chop away at the nostalgia and appeal of Blue Goose in the past decade.

It may or may not have been inevitable that Blue Goose could not survive, but the pandemic and other factors that only current owner Paul Lencioni would know for sure certainly didn't help.

Here's to hoping the concept of what First Street was supposed to be can remain vitally important and get a positive jolt from the next tenant in the Blue Goose location.

Open that Wok

Wok 'n Fire restaurant hit the same number of snags that most restaurants faced this past year - supply chain problems, pandemic concerns and labor uncertainties.

Toss in the fact that owner Mark Bartlett was trying to get his restaurant up and running in a new location on the east side of St. Charles for more than a year, and you can see why he's quite excited to finally open the well-known eatery again.

A ribbon-cutting this week at the 2801 E. Main St. site made it official and completed the transition from its previous location along First Street in downtown St. Charles to a more prominent site with indoor-outdoor dining potential and more parking.

Bartlett has been involved with Wok 'n Fire since it first opened in St. Charles in 2008 and took over full ownership of the business in 2016.

He believes he's in a good spot now, in the former Sweet Tomatoes buffet site.

Like any other east-side business owner, he'll be watching closely as to what happens with the empty Charlestowne Mall property. That's been the unknown wild card for well more than a decade now.

A fine neighbor

Wade Weisman would likely be bringing up some of his family's history during the recent crisis in Europe. Fourteen years ago, I wrote about Wade and Betty Weisman, then of St. Charles, clearing stuff out of their attic in preparing to move closer to their son in Virginia.

They found letters and artifacts from Wade's grandfather about his participation in America's little-known invasion of Russia in 1917 called the "Polar Bear Expedition." It was a U.S. expedition to protect railways in Russia after World War I and keep Bolshevik troops from spreading communism into other regions.

Wade was really proud of his family's military service and roots, including his own in the Coast Guard and his son's service in the Air Force.

I was in the Tri-Cities Exchange Club with Wade for more than 20 years, and it was sad to hear of his recent passing in Virginia, about four years after I mentioned that his wife Betty, a well-known City of Geneva employee, had passed away.

The Weismans were great friends and neighbors to my late mother-in-law in the neighborhood near Thompson and Haines middle schools in St. Charles.

They consistently did what came naturally to them - offering anything they could to help someone else and following through on it more often than not.

dheun@sbcglobal.net