It was about 11:45 on a Thursday when I pulled into the gravel lot off East Lake Road and realized I was already behind the lunch crowd. Inside Kurtz Restaurant & Fish Market, the Friday fish fry crowd hadn’t arrived yet — that’s technically tomorrow’s problem — but the regulars had clearly claimed their usual spots at the counter, and the laminated menus had the soft, well-handled quality of something that has seen a lot of winters.
Kurtz has been operating in some form since the 1940s. The building looks exactly like what it is: a working fish market that added a dining room at some point and never felt the need to apologize for either half. The floors are functional. The decor is sparse. There’s a tank. There’s a chalkboard. The woman taking orders does not ask how your day is going in a way that requires an answer.
This is a compliment.
The fish market side sells fresh-caught and Great Lakes product — perch, walleye, whitefish, the occasional smelt when the season cooperates. Prices are reasonable by any standard and genuinely reasonable for waterfront Erie, where the tourist economy can sometimes make you feel like you’re being charged a scenic surcharge just for existing near the bay. You can buy raw fillets to take home, or you can eat right there, which most people do.
I ordered the perch dinner, because ordering anything else at a place called a fish market would be a small personal failure. It came with coleslaw, a dinner roll, and fries. The perch was lightly breaded, fried well — crisp without being industrial, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds — and tasted like the kind of thing someone’s grandmother used to make when that phrase still meant something specific about quality rather than nostalgia. The portion was honest without being theatrical about it.
The clam chowder is worth mentioning separately. It shows up on the menu as an afterthought, listed between two things with more obvious appeal, but it’s thick and properly seasoned and comes in a bowl that costs somewhere in the range of four dollars, which in 2024 feels almost confrontational.
Lunch on a weekday will run you somewhere between ten and sixteen dollars depending on what you order and whether you add a cup of soup. Cash is preferred, though they’ll take a card. The dining room seats maybe thirty people. On Friday evenings, particularly during Lent, that capacity becomes theoretical — the line goes out the door, and this is not an exaggeration locals use for effect. Plan accordingly or accept the wait as part of the deal.
What makes Kurtz worth the trip from the west side or downtown isn’t atmosphere. It isn’t a vibe. It’s that they’ve been doing one thing for eighty years and haven’t drifted from it. No craft cocktails, no rebranding, no weekend brunch pivot. Just a fish market with a dining room attached, serving Lake Erie perch to people who grew up eating Lake Erie perch, and doing it at a price that doesn’t require a moment of internal deliberation before you order.
I was back in my car by 12:30. The parking lot was full.
