The annual ethnic food festival will be held Saturday at St. Andrew the Apostle Parish.
St. Andrew the Apostle Parish will host residents from across the region on Saturday to enjoy authentic cuisine at an ethnic food festival.
Now in its 36th year, the annual Festival of Nations will showcase artisanal cuisine from around the world, from Hawaii to Italy.
The festival will take place on Saturday from 11am to 7pm at the church's Charleroi campus.
The Feast of the Nations was started in 1988 by Father John Marcucci, who set up a food table in the garage of a church in Charleroi.
As the popularity of homemade Italian and Polish cuisine grew, the event grew in size over the years, eventually adding Irish, Slovak, Greek and American cuisine booths featuring home recipes from parishioners.
The festival was revived several years ago by Father Jerry Mikinos, who is now retired but still takes pride in the annual event with the help of longtime volunteers and parishioners.
Joe Caruso, diocesan operations director, said that although the Rev. Levi Hartle has only been with the parish for about a month, he has “energized the parish.”
He plans to bring outdoor Mass to the festival again after it was well-received at last month's Summerfest.
“He saw how beautiful it was and wanted to know why we weren't doing it here for this event,” Caruso said.
The booth will be closed for mass at 4pm.
“It's really wonderful, embracing the summer and all the great people that are here,” Caruso said.
The festival stopped holding outdoor masses about 25 years ago.
“As the festival grew and we changed pastors, we kind of fell away from the festival,” Caruso said, “but I think bringing it back would be a great way to celebrate and draw a lot of people.”
This festival offers something for everyone.
“We haven't changed much because people come to the festival to enjoy what they've been doing for the last 30 years,” Caruso said.
From making pasta sauce to hand-cutting curly fries, there's a lot of preparation that goes into this festival.
Parish chefs have been preparing a variety of ethnic dishes for weeks.
The Hawaiian booth will offer kalua pork sandwiches, Aloha meatballs, Hawaiian coleslaw, Dole Whip, and other tropical drinks.
The Mexican booth will offer green chili burritos, nachos, beef tacos, chicken tacos, Mexican street corn, hand shake margaritas and more.
German food festival including soft pretzels and potato bread •A2
“People have been coming to enjoy the festival for the last 30 years, so we haven't changed much.”
Joe Caruso
PARISH BUSINESS MANAGER Cakes and beer will also be available.
Caruso said one of the most exciting booths was the Greek area, where gyros and spanakopita offer an authentic taste of some of the most popular dishes from Greek culture.
“The gyros are amazing, it's fun to watch the lamb spinning on the spit and the aroma fills the air throughout the festival,” Caruso said.
Greek lemonade, spiked lemonade and baklava will also be available.
Traditional Italian and Slovak dishes have always been crowd-pleasers, including Angie DeRienzo's secret family recipe marinara sauce.
About 50 gallons of sauce will be used to make more than 3,000 ravioli, eight pounds of gnocchi, dozens of trays of eggplant Parmesan and hundreds of meatballs.
The Italian booth will sell meat and cheese ravioli smothered in homemade sauces, eggplant Parmesan, gnocchi and warm and sweet sausage sandwiches that almost always sell out.
Volunteers are also working to prepare about 100 pounds of potatoes to handcraft thousands of pierogi, as well as about 1,000 cabbage rolls and several pounds of haluski.
“The cabbage rolls are amazing,” Caruso said. “They're really good. They're the best in the Mon Valley. And I'm not just saying that.”
American dishes include hot dogs, corn dogs, curly fries, burgers, chicken sandwiches, funnel cake fries, and more.
After filling up on cuisine from around the world, be sure to save some space for dessert.
Festival bakeries will be selling baked goods from France, England, Slovakia and Ireland.
The Festival of Nations has been held annually since 2022 in memory of the late Peggy Foster, a parishioner of St. Andrew the Apostle Parish and former nurse, who passed away on March 18, 2022, six years after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
That year's festival unveiled a bakery case named after her to honor her love of desserts, family and friendship.
“It's a wonderful labor of love,” Caruso said.
Foster helped run the festival's bakery each year, which is now called “Peggy's Pastries” in her memory.
After Peggy passed away, the church community came together to take over the event, with her daughters, Charlie Hartley and Autumn Kissinger, taking over the planning with the help of the original staff who had helped their mother for many years.
Each year, more and more parishioners and volunteers fill the cases with sweet treats.
In addition to food and desserts, there will be small games of chance, children's games, an exclusive basket raffle, and live music by DJ Carey Charles.
“It's really just a fun day celebrating all ethnicities,” Caruso said. “We usually get about 400 people, but sometimes it's a lot more. The weather looks like it's going to improve. The storm is over, it's not too hot, it's going to be a beautiful day, so we're hoping for a good turnout.”
