This Pa. firehouse serves lobster, chianti, local trout, and more on Fridays during Lent. Even the mayor needs a reservation.

ROSETO, Pa. — It’s a Friday during Lent, the traditional time for chaos and a curse or two in the cramped kitchen of Columbia Fire Company No. 1.

Fire tones are beeping out on the handheld radios but the chief says they’ll “drop the pasta and run” if it’s a local call. People are shouting out “right behind you” or “scallops marinara” and a former football coach is dead serious when he says “kill the phone” cause it won’t stop ringing with takeout orders. Suddenly, the man yelling for “Dylan” to hurry with the appetizers is yelling something unprintable because he stabbed himself cutting a baked potato.

Everyone in the kitchen, it seems, is related: uncles, dads, nephews, and cousins. If you tossed a fish stick back there it would land on someone named Goffredo or Martino.

But, whoa, wait a minute. Do they serve fish sticks?

“This is Roseto,” Chief Michael Goffredo says. “This is no fish fry.”

Outside, the first wave of 95 patrons is paying their bills and patting their waistlines. The bar is packed with 50 more people sipping red wine and waiting to be seated. Roseto’s firehouse has evolved into the Northeast’s hottest, temporary Italian restaurant, an elaborate take on the traditional Lenten fundraiser.

“Oh, this is better than any restaurant,” says customer Donna Sylvester, 78. “We grew up with these guys and they can cook. They had no choice.”

Catholic tradition has called for giving up “flesh meat” on Fridays during Lent for centuries. All over Pennsylvania, particularly in rural areas, those Lenten Fridays have long been fundraisers for fire halls such as Roseto’s, along with churches, fraternal groups, and various other nonprofits looking to fill the coffers.

In most towns, that means fish fries with a side of coleslaw or string beans in a church rec hall. In Philadelphia, some churches and even secular community centers will deep fry cod or sole.

Farther out in Pennsylvania, the menu gets more Eastern European. St. Titus in Pittsburgh sells pierogies to go. The Wyoming Masonic Lodge in Luzerne County offers three potato pancakes for $5. In the anthracite coal region, volunteers fold pierogies and chop cabbage for haluski.

“Can you smell the butter and onions through the phone?,” said Jule Harris, a parishioner at Saints Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lackawanna County.

Cyril and Methodius also serves up “pagach,” a mish-mash of leftovers pressed into something people call “pierogi pizza.”

“Don’t tell the Italians that,” Harris said.

In Roseto, a small town of 1,581 about 90 miles north of Philadelphia, in Northampton County, it’s hard to find someone who’s not Italian. At one time, the town claimed to be 100% Italian.

Roseto means “rose garden” in Italian and it’s named for the village of Roseto Valfortore in the southeastern part of the country. That’s where many of Roseto’s Italians emigrated from, in the late 19th century, to work in Northeastern Pennsylvania’s slate mines. Most never left.

The people of Roseto were so happy and content — and living longer than other communities — that researchers came there to study the close-knit community in the 1950s. They found less heart disease and stress there and dubbed the phenomenon the “Roseto Effect.”

It certainly seems stressful to have four dozen items on the menu at the fire company when most Lenten fundraisers have only a handful. Columbia had two options for Lent in the 1970s: melted provolone on a French loaf and some shrimp they deep-fried in a pot of oil on the stove.

Today, they’re serving everything from homemade lobster bisque to an eggplant parm sandwich, scallops, and seafood fra diablo. Chief Goffredo, the head chef, even has a locally sourced trout special on this Friday night in mid-March, and he’s still perfecting a wasabi dill sauce to accompany it before the first diner arrives.

“I think I’m missing a sauce, but I can’t remember what it is,” he says to no one in particular before the chaos begins.

His son, Mike Goffredo Jr., has a suggestion.

“How about you stir the alfredo and make sure it’s not sticking,” he says.

Sandy Goffredo, the chief’s wife, has a picture on her phone of 11 men in uniform, all standing proudly in a row beside a Columbia fire truck.

“They’re all Goffredos,” she says.

There are not many lapsed Catholics in Roseto, but Columbia does serve meat these days for the less devout. That includes cheesesteaks and chops, too: The sirloin filet and lobster tail is the most expensive item on the menu at $43. Most locals still take the “meatless” tradition seriously.

“One guy, Anthony, he don’t eat meat all year on Wednesdays and Fridays,” says Nick “The Bull” Martino, Columbia’s deputy chief.

On this Friday, the fire company has 230 reservations for five seating times that begin at 5:15 p.m. Taking the reservations, which open at 8 a.m. on Tuesdays and usually fill by noon, might be the hardest job in Roseto.

“Well, I’m not Italian or Catholic, so I take the reservations,” says Ken Tillman, a councilman and fire company volunteer with a very busy cellphone.

There’s a stand-by list for people who didn’t make it and dozens of takeout orders, too. Walk-ins might as well bring a rosary. Elected officials are in the crowd, including Kevin Dellicker, a Republican candidate for Congress who tied on an apron to help out in the kitchen.

“It’s a place to see people again but mostly it’s about these firemen and a good cause,” says Mayor Ilene Tillman, who is married to Ken, but still needs a reservation. “They cook a great meal.”

The firemen don’t disclose how much revenue the Lenten dinners bring in but said their summer fundraiser, a large, Italian street festival called the Roseto Big Time, is even more of a spectacle, with homemade sausage and pepper sandwiches they’d stack up against anyone’s on the East Coast.

“You have to come back and try one,” Nick Martino Jr. says

Nearly everyone in the fire hall, all the customers and volunteers, the bartender, and all the Goffredos and Martinos in the kitchen, uttered the same phrase. “Did you eat?,” followed by a warning that “you better.”

Sylvester, whose maiden name was Communale, says “that’s the Italian way.”

“This is Roseto,” she says “It’s how we show love.”