COS COB - For years, Greenwich residents have sought out the freshest and most delicious
food. Jim Thistle, co-owner of Fjord Fish Market in Cos Cob, has dedicated himself and his
business towards the wants and needs of Greenwich residents.
Thistle said, “Customers above all are looking for a market that they can trust.” With rising
concerns over fishing ethics and the increased attention brought to the trade through
several documentaries, seafood consumers are warier than ever.
From untraceable seafood to shrimp dipped in preservatives, it is more challenging than ever to
know where your food comes from and what is in it - Not at Fjord.
Providing responsibly sourced, safe, and delicious seafood is more work than one may think.
Let’s take, for example, the shrimp cocktail sold at Fjord Fish Market.
Thistle said, “Shrimp and salmon are our two biggest sellers.” So finding a safe and ethical
source for one of his business’s most popular items was no small task, and Fjord does so by
ensuring that their shrimp is free of preservatives, most notably sodium tripolyphosphate but also
tastes great. To guarantee this, Fjord Fish Market only sources wild-caught shrimp from a fair
trade certified organization and cooks it in-house.
“We’re not comfortable with the antibiotics and different chemicals that are used in different
countries, and so we try to get everything that is antibiotic-free,” said Thistle.
Sodium tripolyphosphate, more commonly known as STTP, is a preservative that some markets
use to make their products appear to be bigger than they are. This practice is dishonest and also
very dangerous. In high enough doses, STTP can be toxic.
“We can buy shrimp for half the cost that we’re paying, but there’s a lot of issues with it, you
know the supply chain is untraceable, the labor force is not audited, it’s dipped in sodium
tripolyphosphate, there’s a lot of different issues,” said Thistle.
Fjord Fish Market separates itself from others through the stringent standards it holds when
sourcing seafood.
As aforementioned, the seafood supply chain can be murky. That is why Fjord does the
research for the customer—ensuring that in such a business, full of ethical barriers, what the
customer is receiving was not the product of something unethical.
Thistle set guidelines that help to connect the customer with seafood providers that share the
same ethical concerns and beliefs.
Fjord Fish Market does not do business with companies that use forced labor, antibiotics, or
catch methods that unnecessarily harm the seafood or those who work hard to catch it.
Sushi, one of the staples of the Fjord business, is made by hand in-house, using the same
responsibly sourced seafood that is available to customers in the fish case. The taste and
freshness are a testament to the principles that Fjord Fish Market created its business around.
The practices that Fjord uses to source their shrimp carry over to every product sold in the case at
Fjord Fish Market, and customers are always welcome to ask questions about the food that they
are buying. After all, that is what Fjord Fish Market is built on, trust, transparency, and delicious
seafood.