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Thanksgiving to-go: Holiday take-out meals trending

By Katherine Mansfield staff Writer mansfield@observer-Reporter.Com 10 min read
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Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter

Since opening the doors in 2017, V&V Scratch Kitchen in Finleyville has offered traditional Thanksgiving dinners to go. Take-out holiday meals have become increasingly popular since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

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Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter

Martin “Chef” Lamarche spends most of his time on the line at V&V Scratch Kitchen in Finleyville, which he owns with his wife, Kristen Lamarche. Each year, V&V Scratch offers carefully curated, made-with-love Thanksgiving to-go meals by reservation to the community.

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Courtesy of V&V Scratch Kitchen

On the Thanksgiving menu this year at V&V Scratch: Herb turkey, pineapple sweet potatoes and Mediterra baked bread, pictured here before being packaged with love for last year’s holiday.

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Courtesy of V&V Scratch Kitchen

Pumpkin gobs may not be on the V&V Scratch Kitchen menu this year, but the take-home dinner will include a pumpkin turtle cheesecake and tart cherry cobbler, both made by the restaurant’s in-house pastry chef.

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Courtesy of St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Volunteers dish out a traditional Thanksgiving dinner inside the St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church last year. Folks are welcome to attend the Moleben service at noon Nov. 24, followed by a free holiday meal.

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Courtesy St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Every year, folks gather inside St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s social hall for conversation and a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Dinners are free, and the church offers both dine-in and take-out options.

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Courtesy of Rich Wolfe

Along with Thanskgiving staples (think turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy), the Trolley Stop Inn in South Park offers whimsical sides, like a meat charcuterie board, for pre-dinner nibbling.

This Thanksgiving, locals will gather ’round the table for conversation and all the usual fixings: turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and homemade pumpkin pie.

But for many, the traditional holiday dinner will be served sans prep. Instead, it will arrive home neatly packaged, made with love by a favorite area chef.

“For me, I look at this as this is my community and I want to serve the community the best I can,” said Rich Wolfe, general manager at Trolley Stop Inn in South Park, who is offering Thanksgiving dinners at reasonable prices to those who don’t want or are unable to prepare a holiday meal. “I can’t say enough about this community. Anything I can give back, I definitely will.”

Thanksgiving dinners are expected to cost 13.5% more this year than last, according to the market research company IRI. In 2022, the cost of eating at home rose by 12.4%, while the price of dining out has risen only 8.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

When Wolfe joined the Trolley Stop Inn in 2018, he began catering, providing boxed meals to Bethel Park sports teams, delivering delicious food to locals celebrating momentous occasions, and tailored holiday meals to customers’ needs for years. But two years ago, holiday to-go meals really took off.

“Holiday dinners, that was really big during COVID,” said Wolfe. “I think it still is. Once people saw what was available, that helped them realize, why do I want to go through all this trouble when I can have something brought to me that we can enjoy? The way that prices are in the supermarket, it’s probably not a bad idea to go that way. I’ll do dinners for whoever needs to order. Especially now. Turkey is almost impossible to get.”

Wolfe aims to alleviate holiday stresses by offering quality, home-cooked dinners. The menu varies, and Wolfe lovingly prepares the main courses and sides most beloved by each individual customer. He will do everything he can to ensure those gathered at the Thanksgiving table – hosts included – have the best holiday possible.

“You have to go out, shop, prep all the stuff, cook it, put it out. All the cleaning. It’s a lot on people,” Wolfe said. “If you’re going to cater to somebody, you should take as much off of their mind as possible. They’re throwing a party. They’re stressed about their party. They want people to feel good while they’re there. I put that pressure on myself so they don’t put that pressure on themselves.”

The Minor family, who owns the Spring House in Eighty Four, also takes the pressure off Thanksgiving hosts and hostesses by offering Thanksgiving take-and-bake meals that include turkey, stuffing and all the sides.

“We actually started those during COVID. We were trying to find a way to help people have a socially acceptable way to take care of their parents, take care of their aunt and uncle, and have their own little Thanksgiving,” said owner-manager Marcia Minor Opp. “They were a really big hit the first year.”

This year marks the first “back to normal” Thanksgiving, and Minor Opp said demand for full Thanksgiving to-go meals has declined slightly. But orders for pans of turkey and stuffing and requests for sides like the Spring House’s made-from scratch mashed potatoes have rolled in as Thanksgiving approaches.

That’s not surprising, Minor Opp said, considering the average American spends nine hours in the kitchen cooking for the big holiday gathering.

“Family and friends are so important. If you don’t have to mess around cooking and peeling the sweet potatoes or peeling the mashed potatoes – we’re going to be doing it anyway, and we’re going to be doing it homemade from scratch – you have time to enjoy friends and family,” she said. “You can just be your own sweet self, because everything is ready to go.”

To accommodate last-minute guest additions and reduce day-before holiday stress, Minor Opp said the Spring House will have casseroles, stuffing, hams and a few turkeys available at the store ahead of Turkey Day.

And the Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving, folks are welcome to swing by for casseroles, mashed potatoes and other sides, all available at the Spring House buffet.

“Our whole family is so very thankful for so many folks allowing us to be part of their holiday celebration,” said Minor Opp.

Martin “Chef” Lamarche, too, is humbled that locals sit down to a Thanksgiving meal carefully curated by V&V Scratch Kitchen in Finleyville. V&V, which Lamarche co-owns and runs with his wife, Kristen, has prepared homemade Thanksgiving to-go meals since before the pandemic.

“Food is so important, period. There’s a huge difference between just eating something at the airport McDonald’s, for instance, or eating something that your grandmother cooked with her hands. Thanksgiving, it is the most food-driven holiday. When you think Thanksgiving, everybody thinks, ‘Oh, man, turkey, stuffing, gravy.’ It goes down the whole gamut. It’s a wonderful time to get together and eat something,” said Lamarche. “So is it any more important than any other day when you eat? Yeah, it actually is. It’s something where traditions meet to make everybody happy.”

Lamarche enjoys bringing smiles to faces of his customers, who have supported V&V Scratch since it opened in 2018. Lamarche pivoted early in the pandemic to provide take-out meals, and has since shifted his holiday meal mentality. The first year V&V offered Thanksgiving to go, Lamarche said he served about 700 families.

“It started to feel like we were, I wouldn’t say being greedy, but that’s how it felt to me. I want to serve 300 people the best Thanksgiving you can take home,” he said, noting holiday meals were offered prior to 2020. “It’s not that we don’t want to take care of everybody. It’s that we want to make sure that what we do represents us correctly. It shifted during the pandemic in that I think people became more appreciative of that kind of attention to detail.”

The detail, of course, is in V&V’s thickly-sliced lemon and rosemary turkey, green beans cooked with a hunk of pork belly, made-from-scratch stuffing and sweet potatoes cooked “with love, and tons of butter.”

Lamarche is grateful to be included in a family’s Thanksgiving celebration.

“Food is so intimate. You’re literally taking something that we prepare and you’re putting it in your mouth. We settle for mediocre a lot, but we all recognize when something is special. We have some mega-talented pastry chefs, we have some mega-talented cooks. We have drive and belief in our team and in our vision, which translates so well when you want to showcase a holiday as important as Thanksgiving,” he said. “Beyond just being a great American tradition, it’s so important to just stop and say ‘thanks.’ It’s one of the things that I think we do so great in this country, is to celebrate that. There’s a day when we actually have to stop what we’re doing and give thanks for all the blessings in life. That doesn’t have to be a religious statement. That’s very human. Stop, be thankful, enjoy your family, enjoy your bounty. Just be thankful for all our blessings. There’s a lot of them.”

The Rev. John Charest, of St. Peter & St. Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Carnegie, is thankful that his parish will again offer a free Thanksgiving meal Nov. 24.

The church has offered fellowship and Thanksgiving dinner for more than two decades.

“The church wanted to do an open house, not just giving a meal, to show who we are and what we are all about. So they said, we’ll start with a short service, then invite people into the hall. It started to turn into a ministry,” said Charest. “So many people came out because they don’t have anybody to eat with. When Judge Jack (Kobistek) got involved he really made it about feeding the hungry.”

Empty nesters, widows and widowers, single folks and those who simply want to enjoy a communal Thanksgiving meal flock to the church every year. The Moleben service begins at noon, followed by dinner, which runs from about 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

During COVID-19, St. Peter & St. Paul began offering pickup and delivery dinners, and will again offer those options. Delivery is within the Carnegie area. Reservations for delivery and pickup must be placed by noon Wednesday, Nov. 23.

This year, the church is decorating pick-up and delivery boxes with stickers that provide a link to information on Holodomor, a man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933.

“We have a long history of suffering Ukrainian people. We’re in another war with people suffering. I think it’s important for people to know (about Holodomor), especially while we have the privilege in the United States to have all this food on our plate,” Charest said.

While Charest feels it is important for people to know about the famine, he said what he is most looking forward to this Thanksgiving is welcoming strangers and parishioners into the church’s social hall for a bountiful meal.

“One year during the pandemic, when we were only doing deliveries or pickups, someone came to pick up and he said, ‘All I can do is take the food home and eat it?’ He said, ‘I didn’t really come for the food. I wanted to eat with people.’ That broke our hearts,” Charest said. “We’re about hospitality. That togetherness. Come in, let us bring you into our family.”

For those who simply cannot wait to dig into turkey and the works, Hartley Inn in Carmichaels is this year serving up Thanksgiving Eve meals.

“We just offer that the day before for people who might not be able to get a dinner on Thanksgiving Day,” said owner Brian Currey. “There’s some of our customers that have nowhere else to go. I’m trying to make up for it the day before for them.”

Harley said for months, the turkey shortage has been a topic of conversation, and folks are welcome to dine in Nov. 23, when Hartley Inn will serve turkey, gravy and other Thanksgiving staples.

“Our community, these people, have got us through the good times, the bad times. They’re tremendous to my servers. I would try to do anything to help out this community,” he said. “Family – that’s how we feel about our community. Just buy your ticket. We like to have our family here as close to the holidays as we can.”

The Spring House and V&V Scratch Kitchen are closed for holiday meal orders, but there is still time to reserve a meal from the Trolley Stop Inn and St. Peter & St. Paul.

To order from Trolley Stop Inn, call the restaurant at 412-831-7300.

For more on St. Peter & St. Paul’s Thanksgiving dinners, visit https://www.orthodoxcarnegie.org/thanksgivingopenhouse or call 412-276-9718.

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