Clamming up

Sunday, June 29, 2008

I’ve been on a tear lately to find local seafood.  It just shouldn’t be this difficult.  The 100 mile radius from Philadelphia includes the Jersey shore, Delaware Bay, and parts of the Chesapeake Bay.  And within those waters, we (should) have access to tons of seafood - from clams and oysters to scallops and squid to lobster and bluefish.  Yet I have walked into about half a dozen seafood shops and a few grocery stores, and I can only reliably find Jersey bluefish.

This past weekend I found myself in a Genuardi’s (the one on Baltimore Pike not far from the Springfield Mall) to buy an iced tea, so I wandered into the seafood department. “What do you have that’s caught in Jersey?” I asked.  The woman behind the counter thought for moment and said, “Well, I think probably the bluefish and flounder.  We get boxes labeled ‘East Coast’ and we know from migratory patterns that it’s probably from New Jersey.  I would guess I’m 90% sure the bluefish and flounder are from Jersey.”  I guess I should be excited the seafood workers at grocery stores pay attention to migratory patterns of fish, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the chain doesn’t get fish with exact labeling.  It goes beyond me just wanting to know - what if there was a problem with a particular fishing ground?  It would make it really difficult to recall fish without having a concrete location for the fish.

One of the One Local Summer regional coordinators recently found Jersey scallops at Whole Foods.  I have yet to hit a Whole Foods to check out their seafood selection (I plan to this week), but that’s some potentially good news.  I’m really shocked I haven’t been able to find more Jersey seafood in grocery stores - earlier this year the NJ Department of Agriculture expanded a branding and marketing initiative to label Jersey seafood.

There are only two shops I’ve found (and note that I have not visited every single seafood market in Philadelphia and the surrounding burbs) that reliably have Jersey bluefish - that’s a tiny seafood market on Calcon Hook Road in Sharon Hill and Hill’s in Media.  I do have some good leads on some other places to check out.  One is Haddonfield Shellfish (170 Grove Street in Haddonfield, NJ).  I’m told they have a good selection of Jersey-caught fish.  The other is Ippolito’s in South Philly.  Rumor has it that they occasionally have Cape May salt oysters, as well as other Jersey fish.

Coincidentally, Cape May salt oysters are on the Slow Food Ark of Taste, as are Delaware Bay oysters.

The other option is mail order.  I still haven’t figured out how I feel about this.  I mean, yes, one would be ordering local seafood from a local harvester - and having them delivered via mail is probably more environmentally sound than if I drove to, let’s say, Cape May to pick them up myself.  Places where you can order local seafood for delivery include Atlantic Capes Fisheries and The Lobster House.

I did find some topneck clams from the Chesapeake Bay at Hill’s in Media.  This really stretches the limit of the 100 mile radius, but it still counts.  I steamed them in butter, white wine, a bit of chopped onion and garlic, basil, parsley, and dill.

Where it all came from:
clams, Chesapeake Bay - 100-130 miles
butter, homemade from Dutch Way Dairy cream - 100 miles
wine, Chaddsford winery - 20 miles
onion, Landisdale Farm - 100 miles
garlic, my garden - 0 miles
basil, parsley, dill, my garden - 0 miles