CLEVELAND — For the Polish community in northeast Ohio, Fat Tuesday is better known as “Paczki Day.” 

People line up for hours at Rudy’s Strudel & Bakery in Parma to get a taste of the tradition. The team starts hand-making paczki about a month ahead of time. 

“You gotta pregame for Paczki Day,” said Rudy’s Strudel & Bakery Owner Lidia Trempe. 

She should know, she said she’s been at the bakery since birth. 

“My bed was behind the oven,” she said. “My very first job at Rudy’s, which is still kind of my favorite, was screaming to my mother that a customer came in.”

Her parents immigrated from Ukraine and Poland, and purchased the shop the year she was born.

“I always say Rudy is like my sibling,” she said. “We grew up together.”

She and her staff prepare paczki by hand. 

“Old-fashioned way, this is exactly how they did it old-school style,” she said. “In the motherland.”

But the more than 30 flavors on the menu are not all traditional, like the “Paczki of the Year” the Porco Hurricane.

“Passionfruit, rum extract, grenadine, orange extract, all whipped, hand-whipped in this beautiful, beautiful buttercream,” Trempe said. 

It also plays into a Paczki Day partnership with other local businesses, like Porco and The Current Year, whose owner, Michael Stutz, is set to DJ during the event. 

“It makes each individual business better and definitely, I hope, makes the community better, too,” Stutz said. 

At Rudy’s, boxes of paczki are topped with a sprinkle of powdered sugar, putting a smile on customers’ faces, who said they’re thankful to be a part of the family business. 

“The love is made into them,” said Heidi Ressler. “The flavor and taste of the original paczki that grandmother would make into it, to be honest with you.”

While Trempe said she’s excited to welcome everyone into the place she calls home. 

“To have all these people that I consider friends and family to come here and celebrate our culture, it’s amazing,” she said. 

Trempe said her team made about 75,000 paczki for Paczki Day.