JANUARY 19, 2021

  HELLO EVERYONE!!!!

This is another funny week for fish availability. We are trying to secure some local swords. Wish us luck on that one. Also, we think we have another good shot of fluke coming in for more of the beautiful stuff. Hey, cold waters make for fattier more delicious fish. And healthier, too. 

Mussels are back this week. Oysters will be Irish Points in honor of Joe Biden. We all need a little luck here. We will be featuring frozen raw puff pastry from our good friend CJ from Oui Pastries in Old City. This time, two 1lb sheets of puff, no croissant dough to keep things simple. Good stuff. Mushrooms in puff pastry? Oh yeah. How about salmon Wellington with mushrooms? Oh yeah! Speaking of Oh yeah, mushrooms next week for you guys. Yay!! Order early and often. 

Man, oh, man! The fun people were having with Spanish mackerel (which a lot of people told us is their new favorite fish) and monkfish (which went into so many different curries, broths and even paella). 

You know, back in my restaurant days, it would've been hard to sell people on these kind of fish. Understandably, when we are not that familiar with a fish, we are not inclined to experiment too much when we go out. So people don't order them and chefs get discouraged to try selling them again. And so, you ended up with the same 5-7 fish on a menu and nothing else. What you all are discovering is that there are things out there to fall in love with and that's a beautiful thing.

Which got me thinking about a lot of things. Yes, my mind can start to move and flow in convoluted ways sometimes. Mostly, I suppress it because I could disappear for a while. Sometimes, I let it go trusting that the path will lead me somewhere. 

So, it was a year ago this week that funny things were happening here with the price of salmon. Salmon has always crept up in price in January partly because workers take vacations over the  holidays in those industries too. Partly because Chinese New Year occurs in January or February (the year is on a lunar cycle) and so demand there goes way up because people go out to celebrate and travel around the country a lot. 

Well, this time last year, Wuhan province was shut down leading to a collapse in the price of salmon here. All the production slated for China was closed from entry and, consequently, dumped on the European and American market causing a huge over-supply and the resulting collapse in price. That's when I started following what was happening. Because of the price of salmon.

Well, it has been a year full of adapting and distancing and pivoting and zooming and stressing and panicking and escaping. It has also been a year of helping and sharing and calling and caring and supporting and baking and sewing and cooking and learning and reconnecting. The human spirit can't stop itself. I believe that it will always try to find the spaces where light exists. It's been especially nice that we have share that space together over the past many months.

Lots of people are asking again about whether we will keep doing this when things open up again. Our question in response is "what will that look like and will we still want to do what we did before knowing what we know now?"

Let me frame it this way. In the summer of 1979, my family could be seen in our gas guzzling 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with my father packing a beer in the middle console for the ride, smoking a cigarette in the car with window opened a sliver, my mother holding my 6 month old little brother on her lap with her arms around him for security in the front seat and me and my sister in the back seat playing Mexican jumping beans for hours while we were on our way to Wildwood, NJ from Montreal (don't laugh) on the highway moving at 70 miles and hour. And we were a normal family.

We wouldn't know until later that drinking and driving would be bad. Or that second hand smoke was a killer. Or that seatbelts were necessary for everyone including kids in the back and 6 month old babies needed a special car seat. Nobody really thought about these things but once we did, we could never go back. Could you imagine seeing a car like that today? The adults would be charged with reckless endangerment. It's kind of scary we lived that way, actually.

Could you imagine going into a bar where people smoked cigarettes much less a plane or a train? Can you imagine going to work with a box of tissues with a cold anymore? We used to get complimented for toughing it out and showing up, sick as we were.

Which brings my to the present. I don't know if packed bars and restaurants are going to seem like a good idea when we now know that humans pass all kinds of stuff to other humans. Walking petri dishes we can be. We know about aerosolized breathing anf transmission rates. Are we going to feel comfortable again?

Add to that, the fact that we are all learning how to source high quality ingredients that were not available to us before learning how to make magic out of it. Is it so hard to imagine that our nights out in the future will be in our homes with us cooking equal to or better food than restaurants that we know will definitely be understaffed and under skilled anyway? Where we can control the pace of dinner without feeling rushed and enjoying the connection with friends without interruption?

Nobody knows, really. What we do know here, though, is that we will continue to do what we are  doing. You will continue doing what you are doing. And when those two things don't line up anymore, well, we'll say thank you. blow you a kiss and say goodbye. 

Until then, after a frustrating 2020 and an ominous start to 2021, I place my faithful hope in the Chinese calendar and the onset of s new year (see? I told you my mind works in funny ways). We are coming out of the Year of the Rat and moving into the Year of the Ox which represents diligence, dependability, strength and determination. Make whatever symbolic parallels you like whether social, viral or political. So, I just ask the stars above that determine these things to be true to itself. Stars, do what you say you do. In other words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsMtoZBM3Rw

Look out for the order form Thursday at 9am

Peace,

Robert Amar

Small World Seafood

Owner