The new season is about to start: Santa Cruz-based H&H Fresh Fish offers weekly subscriptions to its sustainable seafood “CSS” (Community Supported Seafood). Once you join, you can select from several pick-up sites in Santa Cruz and nearby areas including Los Gatos, Santa Clara, and Campbell. These sites include local businesses, residences, and farmers’ markets.
The new season starts on Tuesday, February 7 and lasts 16 weeks. I recommend starting your season as soon as possible, but if you don’t get a chance to sign up before February 7, you can sign up at a later date. This wonderful program began in June 2011; for the history, read my overview article from last October (note that the online form is out of date in that article; current link is below).
Each week, customers receive extremely fresh fish in a cooler bag, plus an email with recipes and recommended cooking techniques from co-owner Heidi Rhodes, who runs H&H with Hans Haveman. The amount of seafood depends which share you choose, and there will be local fish such as salmon, black cod, snapper, and white seabass.
Share types include:
- Single share – approximately 1/2 pound of fish once a week ($10/week)
- Couple share – approximately 1 pound of fish once a week ($18/week)
- Family share – approximately 2 pounds of fish once a week ($30/week)
- Couple share 2 meals/week –approximately 2 pound of fish, includes two different types for variety ($30 week)
If your needs aren’t met by the share sizes offered in the standard program – which include more than the list above – Rhodes invites you to contact her (831-461-1576 or info@hhfreshfish.com) for a customized share such as 1.5 or 2.5 pounds a week.
Since last season, which ended in December, H&H has expanded its CSS to many more cities (including Los Altos and Los Gatos – with San Francisco in the future), increased its Santa Cruz pick-up sites (Companion Bakeshop is a new venue), and added several new features to its program. It switched to a new, easy-to-use sign-up system. You can add options to your basic seafood share; these include fresh, raw oysters ($18/dozen) and vacuum-sealed fresh smoked salmon ($8/portion). With these fun options, you can either add them for the whole season or you can add them a week at a time when you’re in the mood.
If you decide to pay ahead for a whole year ($874 for 48 deliveries) instead of just the upcoming 16-week season, you receive a $100 credit good at H&H’s online store. In the near future, the online store will have lots of items including cedar planks, dry rubs, shucking knives, and wasabi (this is also the place where you can add an extra portion to your subscription for a week if you’re going to have company, etc.).
Another bonus: if you refer people to H&H and they join, you receive a “$10 credit” for each member that signs up for a 16-week season. If you want to introduce someone to H&H through a gift certificate, those are available for whole- or half-seasons at the CSS store.
The fishermen that supply H&H are fishing daily, so the seafood’s freshness is apparent. In addition to the CSS, H&H sell fish at 16 Bay Area farmers’ markets. There are many reasons why the H&H CSS is a great, unique program, including its mantra “Sustainability first, locality second.” At certain points of each season, if the local fish availability isn’t up to extremely high standards, H&H will bring in a fish from elsewhere-but it will always be sustainable. In the past, this has included beautiful salmon from Alaska and tender yellowfin tuna from Hawaii.
Sustainability is a complex issue. “Some people would like to believe it’s as simple as reading a green/yellow/red card but in fact it goes way beyond that,” Rhodes explains. “The ocean is so vast and seafood so diverse that a species on one shore may be 100% sustainable and on another shore endangered. When you buy local it becomes much simpler and easier to do the research.” Rhodes and Haveman have 10 years experience in the retail seafood business and Haveman has spent decades commercial fishing, so as a team they have acquired vast resources and knowledge. “That being said, we don’t want our customers to quit asking questions or doing their own research. We are here to help and offer education, or ‘re-education’ as we like to call it, on the often confusing grey matter that is ‘sustainable’ fish.”
Stay up to date with the H&H Facebook page.
On Twitter? Follow me@santacruzfoodie.
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