273. Mermaid’s Garden NYC | Seafood CSA and Fish Market | Mark Usewicz | Brooklyn, NY

For Valentine’s Day I asked Mark Usewicz from Mermaid’s Garden NYC to talk to us about their Fish Market and CSA since it seems like the news is all about the Mediterranean diet. I love fish, and caring for sustainable Oceans and water is important to me, and I think it probably is for you too. I’ve got some great videos of my mom making her delicious fish I’ll try to add at the end. Sorry it took so long to get this out there, but I always say the perfect interview happens when just the right listener is in the audience!

MermaidsGardenNYC.com

Mermaid’s Garden On Instagram

Check out Mark’s pieces in Martha Stewart

Tell us a little about yourself, Mark Usewicz.

I was trained as a chef

restaurant business

lived in NYC

last thing I wanted to do was open my own restaurant and the next worse thing is open my own business but

my wife was in the restaurant business

trained as a fish biologist

We saw this need for a great fish market in our neighborhood, there really wasn’t anywhere great to buy fish

We knew a few fishermen and we built this network started a fish share kind of like a CSA or CSF but we’re not the fisherman

Started by connecting our customers with a weekly fish sourced in the Northeast

we work with fishermen on

• Long Island
• Massachusetts
• Rhode Island

Developed this whole network of

• aqua-culturists
• small boat fisherman

retail space

fish share going retail market

• all domestic
• small boat
• fisherman sourced seafood

I grew up in Buffalo, NY so other side of the state

a lot of people don’t know where that is in NYC,

• different vibe
• different pace

I grew up on Long Island and I have sooooo many fond memories of buying fish on the docks from the fisherman in Freeport on Long Island. My mom would cook all the fish from scratch, cut the heads off scale it etc… and then there’s been so much on the news this year about