Style Weekly Feature | Fresh Catch
Style Weekly - Fresh Catch
Get your summer seafood fix at these area pop-ups, markets and restaurants.
By: Helen Mitternight
Yellow Umbrella Market and Slack Tide Fish Co.
Fishmonger Travis Marshall has been with Yellow Umbrella for more than 20 years. Marshall says the relationships the market has built with suppliers are the key to Yellow Umbrella’s quality seafood.
“We have a distribution center in Maryland and they send us the best quality first. Everything is fresh, except Chilean Sea Bass (which is typically flash-frozen on the boat) and some of the flash-frozen shellfish,” Marshall says.
The Patterson Avenue location has about 15-18 varieties of fish, and the new Scott’s Addition store has about 12, all of it sustainably farmed or wild caught.
Fishmonger Travis Marshall has been with Yellow Umbrella for more than 20 years, and he says the relationships the fish purveyor has built up with suppliers are key to Yellow Umbrella’s quality seafood.
Marshall frequently sees customers whose doctors have recommended that they eat more fish for their health, he says, but they don’t know where to start.
“I say, ‘I’m going to make you a fish man. I’ll get you a nice piece of white fish and a recipe for a sauce’ and I’ll get them excited about fish. There’s so much junk on the market and smelly fish counters. Our fish counter doesn’t smell. We inspect everything that comes in and, if it’s not up to our standards, then we send it back. Not that we really have to do that, because of those long relationships,” says Marshall. “They know what we expect.”
Marshall says too many people were raised on frozen fish sticks and think that’s what fish is. Fresh fish is a whole different quality, he says, noting it’s worth the increased price.
“You get what you pay for. When you freeze fish, you break the cell wall, so when you thaw it, it’s watery, and white fish may have more of a fishy flavor,” he explains. “If you’re paying a premium for your seafood, it’s probably been flown or trucked in within a day or two of being in the water, and that’s what you want.”
The latest Yellow Umbrella in Scott’s Addition, located in the Ballast development, sits next to seafood-centric restaurant, Slack Tide Fish Co., which officially opens the first week of June.
“Slack Tide will be a full-service restaurant with global coastal cuisine and an emphasis on the Mid-Atlantic,” executive chef Caleb Shriver says.
Slack Tide also happens to serve up Matheson oysters at the raw bar.
Yellow Umbrella Scott’s Addition and Slack Tide Fish Co. are both located at 1320 Summit Ave.