Seafood and "Our Flounder" Ivar Haglund: made for each other!
If you’ve been to our restaurants this month, you may have noticed October is National Seafood Month, a time to highlight smart seafood choices and the health benefits of eating a diet rich in seafood. At Ivar’s we live this every day!
On our Facebook page we’re posting tips for choosing and preparing fin and shellfish at home with the help of our talented chefs! In our restaurants, the time to dive into something you might never have tried otherwise is now.
The Food and Drug Administration suggests that people eat 2 six-ounce servings (a portion that would basically cover the palm of your hand) of seafood each week. At Ivar’s, however, there’s no limit to where your appetite will take you! How does one pick a favorite? The fruits de mer that grace our menus are like our children – each is special and brings us delight: clams, oysters, mussels, crab, salmon, sole, lingcod, halibut, prawns, and oceans more. We frequently change up the preparations to make enjoying seafood a perennial culinary treat, so if you don’t dare try it at home, we have you covered!
While we’re celebrating, let’s cast out some facts provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
- Fishing (all forms) is a $72 billion per year business in the United States, which sustains the economies and identities of our coastal communities. At the same time, U.S. fishermen and local economies are struggling in large part as result of years of decline in fishing.
- U.S. fisheries and aquaculture industries create almost 2 million jobs, from boats in the fleet, to shellfish farms, to processing facilities.
- More than 84 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported (Ivar’s talking here: With numbers like these you’ll appreciate how much of our seafood is Northwest-sourced!).
- In 2010 U.S. commercial fishermen landed 200 million more pounds of product, the value of which increased when compared to 2009.
- Fisheries are moving in a sustainable direction: The Fish Stock Sustainability improved by 63 percent from 2000-2010 for the 230 most economically significant stocks.
Catch us during National Seafood Month at Ivar’s. Do it for your health; do it for your country!
Fresh, seasonal, Northwest specialties aren’t just found in Ivar’s catches from the sea; we put just as much emphasis into the freshness and locality of our produce. When we landed Jason Bray as our executive chef at Ivar’s Salmon House more than six years ago, along with this talent came an inseparable relationship with one of his favorite purveyors: Merv Dykstra of Merv Dykstra Farm in Grandview, Wash.