OCTOBER 12, 2020

 GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!!

Last week was a ton of fun!! I love to see all the instagram photos of people preparing clams and skate wing and setting up beautiful cheese plates. We are grateful to Ann at Third Wheel Cheese Co for providing us with the opportunity to have some good cheese at home. We will definitely do this again with her in a few weeks.

So, selling cheese along with seafood really doesn't make a lot of sense on the surface of things. What does cheese have to do with seafood? Not much, huh? If you think of things in another way, however, we are coming to you anyway, right? Most of us are not really leaving our neighborhood much and we don't really want to go to supermarkets to browse. We are in and out of those places faster that a Ritz cracker walking into a gluten free convention. Also, we are not exploring the city for interesting things much anymore like we used to so we are unaware of what is available in other parts. Well, let me tell you, there is some cool stuff happening out there. Some businesses are Covid born. Others, like us, are Covid pivots. 

Since we are the mules coming to your neighborhood anyway, why not feature some of the cool stuff that is out there? You can try it and maybe you go to them for more. So, we'll be trying to feature some businesses over the next few weeks that we think are pretty damn cool. Who knows. Maybe we'll just keep doing it. Hopefully, you will support them too. We are talking about bagels, breads, babkas, coffee and, of course, you know about the cheese.

This week, we will be offering an appetizer and dessert to complement your fabulous meals. The first is from my good friend, Pierre Calmels, owner of Bibou restaurant (biboubyob.com). He has decided to pivot from high end prix-fixe dinners to making French goodies such as pates, sausages and meal boxes. How do you navigate trying to still do a restaurant when you only had 22 seats and try to function at 25% or 50%. You can't. he is one of the best French chefs in the city so whatever he makes will be amazing.

Pierre is going to prepare escargots in garlic herb butter for you all! How does that work? He will be portioning a dozen escargots in an aluminum container with a chilled garlic herb butter than can be heated in your oven to bring it all together. Get yourself some baguettes and indulge! The price will be $18 per dozen. A notable restaurant on Rittenhouse Square sells 5 escargots for $15 so this is quite a bargain and the quality will be outstanding. 

The final course of your dinner will come from Oui Pastries in Old City (ouipastries.com). The owner CJ does some really inventive stuff with her baking. She even provides baking kits for people to prepare their own pastries at home. Good fun. She will be producing a sampler box of desserts, 4 per, for you all to enjoy. We will describe them fully in Wednesday's order form email. We look forward to working with both of these creative spirits.

And now onto fish... finally. This time of year brings some fish we don't normally see at other times of the year. We played with red drum and speckled trout from North Carolina in the past two weeks. Locally, we've secured a boat load of fresh albacore tuna for you all!! You may have seen Andy, Brian and I playing with albacore over the weekend on our instagram page, @smallworldseafood. I poached mine in olive oil and make a puttanesca pasta. Andy smoked his over cherry wood and Brian sesame crusted his and served it with bok choy and shiitake mushrooms. There is a lot you can do with this fish. It is totally underrated because of canned tuna stories. 

The great thing about it, too, is that it is much cheaper than its bigger brothers Yellowfin and Big Eye. At $12lb skinless and fully cleaned, you have a pretty cheap tuna you can sear, braise or preserve. I tell you, you may have the best tuna Nicoise if you do it right!

We are not sure about the other fish special yet as the weather is really causing some ripping winds out at sea today into tomorrow. Stay tuned on that one. 

One sad note is that we may be saying goodbye to scallops after this week for a bit. The prime season is ending and prices are going up. Usually when that happens, quality decreases as well. Think of tomatoes in January. Expensive and hard to find a good one. Same with fish. They freeze very well if you want to stock up a bit. We will feature them again when we find a good crop at a good price. Promise. 

Mussels are back this week and we will be going back to Massachusetts for oysters. This time we will be introducing Model T's from the Duxbury area. I believe that travelling around through food can energize the spirit. It's not the same, I know, but it can be the next best.

 Anyway, that's a lot of blah blah blah and blah blah blee from me. I can talk forever, as my wife will attest. In fact, one year around this time, I challenged everyone in my family to pick a costume for me for halloween. They picked mime...go figure...

Look out for the order form Wednesday at 11am.

Best,

Robert Amar

Small World Seafood

Owner