Anchovies Redux

A week after things started shutting down because of COVID-19, I learned about the Anchovy Project, Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinki’s project to introduce local anchovies that were only two hours removed from the ocean to the San Francisco food scene. The Anchovy Bar not only survived COVID-19, it’s a hard reservation to get with limited outdoor seating, so I still haven’t been, but I’m looking forward to trying it.

This week, Eater published this fantastic video detailing how the anchovies get from the ocean to the restaurant:

I particularly love how a few people managed to create and improve a supply chain to make all of this possible. It takes a tremendous amount of vision and passion to do this. I doubt the demand for very fresh, local anchovies was very high prior to this project, and so building the supply chain to do this required faith and personal commitment. Now that it exists, demand has gone up and other restaurants are benefiting from their work. The more our attitudes change about seafood, the better it will be for our health and happiness as well as the ocean.

The Anchovy Project

A few weeks ago, I discovered (via The Marshall Store) local pickled herrings. I’m not a huge fan of pickled herrings, but I was surprised to learn that they catch them here in the Bay Area, as I had never seen them in the markets or on a menu. I was telling this to my friend, Kate, my go-to person for all things related to oceans, and we got to talking about why we don’t eat more local fish, especially those lower on the food chain. She pointed me to State Bird Provisions’ Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski’s brilliant Anchovy Project:

They were planning on opening Anchovy Bar in San Francisco before COVID-19 shut everything down. I hope this pandemic doesn’t kill the project. We need more places like this.