One perch dinner, two ways to make it count.
In Ashtabula, this Ohio seafood setup works as both a sit-down meal and a take-home stop.
The restaurant handles lunch or dinner, while the nearby market gives you another move once the plate is cleared.
Lake Erie perch ties the two together. Order it at the table, grab it as a sandwich, or take some by the pound for later without turning the trip into two completely separate errands.
More than fifty years of local history sit behind the operation, but the real charm is how practical the whole thing is.
Are you stopping for dinner, or is the cooler getting a turn too?
Lake Erie Perch Gets Lightly Hand-Breaded Before It Hits The Fryer
Lake Erie perch is one of the clearest links between Hil-Mak’s restaurant and fish market. On the restaurant menu, the fish is lightly hand-breaded and fried rather than coated in a thick batter.
The restaurant offers two portion sizes. A four-ounce order keeps the meal smaller, while the eight-ounce version doubles the amount of fish. Both sit in the Surf section of the menu and come with two sides of your choice.
The perch can also be served as a sandwich, giving you a more casual way to order the same hand-breaded fish without committing to the larger dinner format.
That flexibility makes the first decision simple. Pick the smaller portion if you are adding appetizers or another seafood item, choose eight ounces when perch is the main event, or move to the sandwich when a handheld lunch fits the day better.
Lake Erie perch also appears as an add-on, so it can be combined with another entree when you want more than one type of seafood on the plate.
The important detail is the preparation. The perch remains a hand-breaded fried item whether it is ordered as the main seafood entree or added to another meal.
Eight Ounces Gives The Restaurant Perch Dinner A Larger Option
The restaurant does not force every perch order into one fixed size. Four ounces and eight ounces are both available, which lets you decide how much fish should lead the meal.
The eight-ounce option is the larger of the two and comes with the same two-side format as the rest of the Surf section.
That means the plate can be built around perch and then finished with choices such as a baked potato, rice pilaf, French fries, the vegetable of the day, tossed salad, coleslaw, potato salad, applesauce, or pasta.
Onion rings and soup can be used as upgraded sides as well.
That side list matters because the restaurant plate works differently from the fish market dinner.
At the Lake Avenue restaurant, you choose two sides rather than automatically receiving fries and hush puppies. The fries-and-hush-puppies format belongs to the market’s separate seafood dinners.
If you want to keep the meal centered on fish, a salad or vegetable can balance the fried perch. If comfort food is the plan, fries, potato, pasta, or onion rings can push the plate in that direction.
The portion choice comes first, then the sides do the rest. It is an easy way to keep an eight-ounce perch dinner from becoming the exact same meal every visit.
The Fish Market Sells Fried Lake Erie Perch By The Pound
The nearby fish market takes the portion idea in a different direction. Instead of limiting fried perch to a plated restaurant serving, the market sells it by the pound.
That format works when you want to decide the quantity yourself. A pound can be taken home as one larger order, divided at the table, or paired with other fried seafood from the same counter.
Lake Erie perch is only the beginning of the by-the-pound list. Jumbo shrimp, haddock, sea scallops, chicken breast, crab sticks, select oysters, ocean perch, clam strips, catfish, Alaskan pollock, and walleye are also available in fried-by-the-pound form.
That gives you room to build a mixed order instead of choosing one seafood for everyone. Perch and walleye can stay close to the Great Lakes side of the menu, while shrimp, scallops, oysters, or haddock change the mix.
The market also offers sandwiches and complete seafood dinners, so ordering by the pound is an option rather than the only way to buy prepared fish.
If takeout is the plan, decide whether you want a finished dinner or a larger quantity of fish before adding sides. The by-the-pound counter is where Hil-Mak’s portion flexibility becomes most obvious.
Fish Market Dinners Add Fries, Hush Puppies And Sauce
A complete seafood dinner at the fish market follows a set format. Those dinners come with a sauce of your choice, French fries, hush puppies, and a fountain drink.
Lake Erie perch is part of that dinner list, along with Alaskan pollock, haddock, crab sticks, sea scallops, jumbo shrimp, ocean perch, select oysters, clam strips, and catfish.
The market also sells fries and hush puppies separately by the half-pound. Onion rings, cheese sticks, and fried mushrooms give you additional take-home choices if the standard dinner sides are not enough for the order you are building.
Sauces include tartar and cocktail options at the market, keeping the prepared-fish side straightforward.
For one meal, the seafood dinner is the simplest route because the sides are already decided. For a larger take-home spread, ordering fish by the pound and adding separate sides gives you more control over quantity.
Knowing which format you want before reaching the counter keeps the order from getting larger than the table actually needs.
Daily Hand-Filleting Connects The Market To The Restaurant Menu
Hil-Mak’s fish market is more than a counter for already-fried seafood. The business sells fresh fish to take home and handles daily hand-filleting as part of the operation.
Atlantic salmon is fresh and hand-filleted in the fish market. At the restaurant, it can be ordered blackened or broiled.
Other fresh seafood on the restaurant menu includes Icelandic scrod and Icelandic haddock, both of which can be prepared in several ways.
Scrod can be broiled, topped with butter crumbs, fried, or served with cheese and mushroom sauce. Haddock can be broiled, finished with buttered crumbs, fried, or beer-battered and fried.
Sea scallops can be blackened, broiled, or fried, while jumbo Gulf shrimp can be grilled, fried, or prepared scampi-style.
That range gives the restaurant plenty to offer beyond perch without separating it from the market side of the business. The fresh-fish counter handles seafood for home cooking, while the restaurant turns many of the same categories into finished meals.
If you are planning to eat first and shop second, bring a cooler. It keeps the market purchase practical when the drive continues after Ashtabula.
The Market Counter Covers Much More Than Perch
Lake Erie perch may be the easiest item to build the story around, but the market carries a much wider seafood selection.
The fried-by-the-pound list covers haddock, jumbo shrimp, sea scallops, oysters, catfish, walleye, pollock, ocean perch, clam strips, and other choices.
The sandwich menu adds perch, haddock, catfish, pollock, ocean perch, oysters, crab cake, walleye, seafood salad, and a shrimp basket.
Complete seafood dinners offer another version of many of those same items.
That overlap gives you several ways to buy the same type of seafood. Haddock can become a sandwich, a complete dinner, or a by-the-pound order. Perch follows the same pattern.
Shrimp can move from a basket to a dinner or a larger fried order.
The fresh side expands the choices further, with fish and shellfish available to take home and cook yourself.
For a mixed household, that flexibility can be more useful than one oversized prepared order. Someone can take home fresh salmon for another day while dinner comes from the fried counter, or one person can choose perch while another goes with haddock.
Start with how the seafood will be used, then choose the market format that matches it.
Two Nearby Hil-Mak Locations Cover Dining And Take-Home Seafood
Hil-Mak has served Ashtabula for more than fifty years, but today’s setup is easiest to understand as two nearby stops with different jobs.
The sit-down restaurant is at 449 Lake Avenue, Ashtabula, OH 44004. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 8:30 p.m.
The restaurant menu handles the four- and eight-ounce Lake Erie perch entrees, sandwiches, seafood combinations, steaks, chicken, ribs, soups, and other dine-in choices.
The fish market is around the corner at 1619 W. 5th Street, Ashtabula, OH 44004. Its regular schedule runs Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
That is where the fresh seafood counter, breaded fish made to order, fried-by-the-pound selection, sandwiches, and market-style seafood dinners fit into the Hil-Mak operation.
The distinction makes planning much easier. Choose Lake Avenue when you want to sit down with a plated perch dinner and two sides. Choose West 5th Street when fresh fish, a take-home seafood dinner, or fried perch by the pound is the goal.
Either way, Lake Erie perch remains one of the most direct ways into Hil-Mak’s seafood menu, with portions that can stay modest at the restaurant or grow by the pound at the market.
Would you start with a plated perch dinner or take a pound of Lake Erie perch home from the market?