Tag: Calvary Waffle Shop

Mary O’Brien doesn’t waffle when Lent arrives. She knows she’s going to spearhead the kitchen at Calvary Episcopal Church’s Waffle Shop.

O’Brien, the church’s kitchen manager, has only been doing it for 16 years.

Waffle Shop, which is celebrating its 95th anniversary this year, is open for lunch Wednesdays through Fridays beginning the Thursday after Ash Wednesday and ending before the start of Holy Week.

The menu hasn’t changed much since Waffle Shop began in 1928. Diners know they’re going to get tomato aspic, shrimp mousse, Boston cream pie, waffles with or without chicken hash, and much more, including the infamous fish pudding.

“I was hired as the parish chef,” O’Brien says. “I do all of the cooking for all of the events at the church and that are going on at the parish.”

That includes Wednesday dinner, Sunday morning breakfast, and Sunday morning coffee hour. “We do funerals, weddings, and lots of outside events.”

A native Memphian, O’Brien didn’t do much cooking growing up. Her sister Elaine Carey is a trained pastry chef. “She’d ask me to help her with different events.”

O’Brien worked in an office for her father until Elaine and her husband, the late Joe Carey, moved from California to Memphis to open the old Memphis Culinary Academy.

After their father died, Elaine invited Mary to attend the school. O’Brien didn’t necessarily want to become a chef, yet, she says, “It was time for me to make a change. I wasn’t happy being in an office.”

But, she adds, “I caught the bug when I went to school.” Just being in class “really pushed me to appreciate good food ’cause we did fine dining and stuff like that.”

After she graduated in the early ’90s, O’Brien went to work at the old 25 Belvedere and Bistro Hemmings restaurants. Later, O’Brien and a partner opened Cafe Eclectic, where she stayed for about six years until taking the Calvary job.

She quickly learned the Waffle Shop recipes were set in stone. “I don’t know how many years those recipes have been there, but I was not allowed to veer away from them because I would be in trouble.”

She did add the seafood gumbo and vegetable soup to the menu.

Laurie Monypenny makes the desserts, and Connie Marshall heads up the waffle-making station. O’Brien and her staff of six make the rest of the food. “We do three huge pans of aspic, two huge pans of mousse. And the poor chicken salad guy, he just keeps on. We cook 120 pounds of chicken breasts and 80 pounds of leg quarters twice a week.”

Waffle Shop runs from 11 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., but O’Brien begins her day at 6 a.m. “I start the custard for the Boston cream pie.”

She usually ends her day about 4:30 or 5 p.m. “Taking inventory. And putting in orders.”

As for that fish pudding, people who’ve never tried the casserole are often skeptical until they taste it. “I think they just see it as maybe fish in Jell-O instant pudding or something. I don’t know.”

O’Brien removed some desserts from the menu over the years. And, she says, “We dropped the chicken livers, which is one of my favorites. It was kind of a small audience.”

Waffle Shop closed shortly after it opened when the pandemic hit in 2020, but it was open for take-out orders the next year. “They were lining up in the alley.”

O’Brien might waffle a bit when Waffle Shop closes for the year. She thinks, “Ohhh, can I do this again?”

But that thought vanishes. “Just these people that come in. It’s like old home week every day.”

Many volunteers have worked at Waffle Shop for decades. Same goes for customers.

O’Brien doesn’t do much cooking at home. “Luckily, my husband cooks.”

So, Kevin O’Brien has dinner ready every night she gets home from Waffle Shop? “Well, I won’t go that far.”

Calvary Episcopal Church is at 102 North Second Street.