St. Symeon Orthodox Church will throw open its doors Saturday for its 8th Annual Food & Culture Fair, a free, daylong celebration of baklava, pierogi and Orthodox heritage at its sanctuary on Clairmont Avenue South. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and requires no registration, giving Birmingham residents a rare, no-cost look inside a church known for its onion dome and wall-to-wall iconography.
The fair will be held at St. Symeon Orthodox Church, 3101 Clairmont Ave. South, according to AL.com. St. Symeon is a parish of the Orthodox Church in America, per the newspaper, and its community draws on Russian, Polish, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Greek and Arab cultural heritage and ethnic influences, a mix that shows up directly in the fair's food offerings.
Six Booths, One Outdoor Tent Marketplace
This year's gathering is formally billed as the 8th Annual St. Symeon Food & Culture Fair, according to a birmingham365.org listing. The outdoor tent marketplace features six ethnic booths this year: Middle Eastern Market, Balkan Bakery, Babushka's Kitchen, Southern Sweets & Savories, Cafe Europa and Moana Munchies, the listing notes. At the Balkan Bakery, guests can buy Bulgarian and Greek pastries like baklava and banitsa, while AL.com separately describes a Slavic tea room serving Russian tea cakes and samovar tea.
Lunch options lean hearty and Eastern European. As always, homemade pierogi will be available hot in the lunch line, as will German-style sausage and kraut sandwiches, per the same birmingham365.org listing — AL.com describes the latter as hoagie rolls stuffed with kielbasa sausage and sauerkraut, and notes that pierogi, a Polish-style dumpling, will be served as well. Frozen pierogi will also be sold by the dozen, according to the listing.
Icon Talks, a Choir Concert and Church Tours
Programming throughout the day blends food with faith and history. St. Symeon clergy will offer tours of the church, AL.com reports, with Deacon Ephraim Rivers leading a presentation on the meaning of the icons at 10 a.m. and associate priest Phillip Ritchey discussing Eastern Orthodox architecture at 1 p.m. The church's own fair page lists that 10 a.m. session as a “What is Iconography?” talk, a 1 p.m. talk titled “Not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill the Law” on church architecture, and an 11 a.m. “Parish Favorites” choir concert sandwiched between them.
The church itself is part of the draw. St. Symeon features Eastern Orthodox iconography and has an Eastern-style onion dome, per AL.com's reporting, while the church's own self-tour guide describes the building as combining a Russian-style onion dome with a Greek-style central dome. No admission or registration is required to attend, according to birmingham365.org.
A Tradition Dating to 2018 — and a Church Founded in 1977
The fair has been held annually since 2018, except for a pandemic pause in 2020, according to a PR.com release tied to last year's event. That release described 2025 as the church's 7th Annual Food and Culture Fair, held Oct. 18 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., which makes this Saturday's gathering the eighth in the series. Last year's event also introduced Moana Munchies, described at the time as a completely new Polynesian food booth, and included a talk from Ritchey along with an 11 a.m. sacred-music concert by the church choir and hot lunch options like sausage roll sandwiches, homemade pierogi and Ukrainian borsch.
St. Symeon Orthodox Church started in 1977, according to AL.com, and opened its current building in 2014. The Rev. Alexander Fecanin joined the church staff in 1984 and was named archpriest in 1999, per the same report. AL.com also notes the fair follows closely on the heels of the Birmingham Greek Festival, which drew record interest two weeks before the newspaper's report.
Orthodoxy 101 Class Follows the Fair
For anyone whose Saturday visit sparks deeper curiosity, St. Symeon will hold a class on Oct. 20 at 6:30 p.m. for people interested in learning more about the Orthodox Church, according to AL.com's reporting. The class offers a low-key, indoor follow-up for fairgoers who want to go beyond the tour and the tea cakes.
