To polish rocks, nature uses water, sand and motion.
To polish ideas and identities, we use the same approach
— a mix of inspiration, grit and energy.
Seafood importing company Wheeler Seafood came to Polished Brands for a new web site that would speak to the elegant and exclusive book of offerings they were bringing to the North American market.
We helped them by messaging, styling and photographing their exceptional products to create their new site. Catch a peak below, and the full Wheeler Seafood web site here.
It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.
"No chowder for you, 'cause clams have feelings too
Actually they don't have central nervousness
No manhatten style, clams have the right to smile
Come to think about it, they don't have a face"
"To sell a high-end product into the US market, you also have to have a good ‘story’ linked to heritage and provenance, and the trip helped my understanding of what is needed. Polly and Alisha’s workshop was excellent, because the presenters made a complex subject easier to understand."
— Archie MacMillan, owner of the Kintyre Smokehouse in Campbeltown
"I learnt how little I know, rather than how much, including the need for constant innovation in product development to stay ahead of the game, and the fact that more than 70 percent of all seafood sales are through the food service sector."
— Angus MacKenzie, MD of Marine Products Scotland in Glasgow
Ten companies from the Scottish seafood industry joined a trip to Seafood Expo North America in Boston in March, as part of a learning journey organised by Seafood Scotland.
The visit served as an introduction to the North American market for companies wanting to explore its potential.
During a busy four days, the representatives were given the opportunity to meet with an importer/distributor and to visit wholesalers, retailers and foodservice outlets.
They also enjoyed a networking dinner at Taranta Restaurant with a Q&A session on supply hosted by Chef Owner Jose Duarte, learned about market requirements from Polly Legendre and Alisha Lumea of Polished Brands, and spent time at SENA walking the floor, developing their own contacts, and making use of expertise provided on the Scottish Development International/Seafood Scotland stand.
Read the full article here.
Just in time for Seafood Expo North America in Boston (SENA 2015), Polished is working with Scottish company Macduff Shellfish to launch a new product to the North American market — frozen clusters of Scottish langoustine tail meat chunks.
The langoustines are wild-caught from a well-regulated fishery. The meat is not treated — just straight-up frozen shelled langoustine meat. The clusters are small, so chefs can quickly thaw just what they want to use.
Quick thaw, Quick cook Pre-shelling means no labor in the kitchen and the tender, delicate meat cooks up in minutes. And because its frozen, chefs can keep it on hand to always have something for specials or a knock-out dish for a surprise VIP.
Menu Versatility Langoustine meat is at home cozied up to caviar as it is at the bar in a deviled egg, and it can be used to replace crab or shrimp in a variety of dishes. Check out the slide show — styled and shot by Polished — for inspiration. And if you're still hungry, there's more from around on the web on the Macduff Shellfish Pinterest page.
our favorite finds from the front lines of food
Great things come in small packages with seafood too, especially at Tincan, a new London pop-up that serves only canned seafood. (Guardian)
The Vocabulary of Food — reading menus through politics and pretensions, and a cool-sounding new book, “The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu” (New York Times)
Ever wonder what the Waldorf Astoria was serving for dinner in 1917? The New York Public Library has made available a digital archive of menus through the years. So far: 1,302,722 dishes transcribed from 17,376 menus
If we could get rid of all that pesky running, this is a marathon we could really get into: The Marathon du Médoc: a full marathon with 23 wine stops, costumes, oysters, steak, and ice-cream. (Guardian)
Ralph Lauren has gotten into the coffee business to spiff up your breakfast. And there's a snazzy vintage truck and copy right out of a perfume ad: “The smell of freshly brewed coffee evokes so many memories for me, mostly of time spent with friends and family; the people I love.” (Luxury Daily)
After 25 Years, Food Arts Magazine Folds Who will fill the gap? (Eater)
our favorite finds from the front lines of food
Literature for lunch: Chipotle Cups Will Now Feature Stories by Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison, and other Authors. Literati are in a bunge, but who says art can't be accessible? The Poetry in Motion subway series delighted commuters for years.(Vanity Fair)
Webster added 3 new food words to the dictionary. New culinary terms include pho ("a soup made of beef or chicken broth and rice noodles"), turducken ("a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a boneless turkey"), and the Canadian favorite poutine ("a dish of French fries covered with brown gravy and cheese curds").
Chef Dan Barber covers What Farm to Table Got Wrong: eat your beans and grains. "In celebrating the All-Stars of the farmers’ market — asparagus, heirloom tomatoes, emmer wheat — farm-to-table advocates are often guilty of ignoring a whole class of humbler crops that are required to produce the most delicious food." (New York Times)
You can get this message, plus a longer conversation with Dan Barber in this radio interview. (WNYC/ Leonard Lopate Show)
The terrifying new McDonald's mascot – and other creepy corporate monsters (Guardian)
Again, science proves what we all know is true: ‘beer goggles’ exist. (Drinks Business)
Help Wanted: S.F. Restaurants Using New Incentives to Attract Kitchen Talent "Simply put: Fewer people want to start at the bottom, so they're getting into the business with a food truck or pop-up and bypassing the restaurant hierarchy." (SF Weekly)
A portrait of the rare and dangerous in Spain: Scraping for Sea Delicacy, and a Meager Living (New York Times)
our favorite finds from the front lines of food
Trendy Kale has been getting around. Meet the newest celebrity offspring (above). (Modern Farmer)
Romancing the Soybean: Agribusiness Funds 'Farmland' To Counter Hollywood Message Says Randy Krotz, with the Farmers and Ranchers Alliance: "How do you get to millennials?...How do you get to ... a transparency generation? Let's show them a little more about how their food is raised firsthand." You can view the trailer here. (NPR)
The EC-funded Diversify Project is trying to get more and different kinds of fished raised in Europe. But how much effort will be put into bringing buyers and tastemakers along? "Cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens make up the vast majority of meat consumed around the world, and every time someone has the bright idea of introducing something like crocodile, ostrich or coypu to the market, the general reaction from taste panels is “Mmmm, nice! It tastes just like chicken or pork or beef....In a few years’ time, will we see taste panels saying “Mmmm, nice! It tastes just like salmon.”? (Seafood Source)
The growing popularity of ancient grains has caused a spelt shortage. (Probably never thought you'd read that phrase.) Spelt flour 'wonder grain' is set for a price a hike as supplies run low (Guardian)
Can seaweed burgers and potato mayo feed a growing world population? It's just seaweed people. Compared to eating bugs, this one should be easy. (Science Nordic)
It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.
It was great reconnecting with friends and colleagues from all over at the European Seafood Exposition last week in Brussels.
Just when you thought we couldn't find another song about seafood, here's The Andrews Sisters with Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood, Mama).
"Want some sea food mama
Steamers and sauce and then of course
I like oysters, lobsters too,
and I like my tasty butter fish"
our favorite finds from the front lines of food
The San Francisco blog The Bold Italic has a series based on taking four-year-olds to fancy restaurants and getting their views on the food, like this little girl (above) who went to Plum. Unless chicken nuggets are in fact your favorite food, it's not super-informative, but they sure are funny. (Bold Italic)
Bodega Snacks & Wine Pairings: The Definitive Guide Now you know what to drink with wasabi peas & Swedish Fish. (Epicurious)
Bittman tackles talking about "organic" and "GMO" in Leave 'Organic' Out of It "Maybe all I’m saying here is this: There are two important struggles in food: One is for sustainable agriculture and all that it implies — more respect for the earth and those who live on it (including workers), more care in the use of natural resources in general, more consideration for future generations. The other is for healthier eating: a limit to outright lies in marketing “food” to children, a limit on the sales of foodlike substances, a general encouragement for the eating of real food." (New York Times)
It's about time: Seafood Suppliers Get Bullish on Brands “The marketplace has a lot of choices, so you need to position a strong brand, particularly with seafood...if we don’t position ourselves we can’t go to market.” (Seafood Source)
Per-Anders Jörgensen photographs staff meals at top restaurants "The family meal has evolved to become an extension of why people work in restaurants in the first place. Now more than ever it is fundamental to their success, and symbolic of what makes a good restaurant great." (Financial Times)
Airpocalypse Now: Jing-A’s New Double IPA Is Inspired by Beijing’s Notoriously Bad Smog
At the launch party, a sliding-scale beer discount was tied to the Air Quality Index. (First We Feast)
weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food
We've gone dark on the blog for the past few weeks as we got ourselves ready for a re-launch. Take a minute and look around our new digs.
Dining out on canned seafood? Why not? High-end canned goods make a great upscale bar snack, no real kitchen required. “We’ve become really obsessed with this stuff and realized it’s an underrepresented food product in the United States so we’ve been reaching out directly to canneries in Portugal and Spain....Because they’re so simply packaged, people have one at the bar and ask if they can take one to go. It was kind of the next logical step for us to offer these things.” (Seafood Business)
WineVision New in Harpers UK looks at social media success (or lack of it) in beverage brands: "The reason why most beer brands are doing a better job than wine in communicating and interacting with consumers is that they are more likely to ask their customers 'how their day has been' rather than feel the need to educate them about their products." (Harpers UK)
The Great Greening Of The Global North: The fall crop is in, harvested. But the map of what we grow, where, is changing, with climate change. A (audio) look at the new map of North American food production. (OnPoint/NPR)
In 'Original Local,' Thanksgiving Recipes From The First Americans (think native) (NPR)
Insect eating creeps on to Paris menus "So on the one hand there's the whole question of finding new sources of food to feed the world. And on the other there's the challenge of making it look and taste good....The implication is that they are miserable people so they deserve miserable food.But it's pejorative. If you prepare them properly, insects are excellent food." (BBC News)
What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets: A new book profiles people from around the world and what their daily calorie and food intake looks like, from a Massai herdswoman, to an American soldier, to a Tibetan monk. (Brain Pickings)
It's never too early or too late for a snack, so crank up that volume on your computer.
Elvis and his shrimp boat band sing a Song of a Shrimp:
"He showed his mama and papa, the shrimp newspaper he read
An invitation to all the shrimp and this is what it said
Free ride, New Orleans, stay in grand hotel
Meet Creole gal who help you come out of your shell"
a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food
"Imagine you are in a bar or at a friend's place, and you want to sabre a bottle of champagne but, tragically, there is no sabre at hand. Fear not..." So reads The Art of Champagne, Artfully Illustrated, in a style that put us in the mind of What do You Say Dear?, the volume of manners (illustrated by Maurice Sendak) which tackles such social conundrums as "You are downtown and there is a gentleman giving baby elephants to people. You want to take one home because you have always wanted a baby elephant, but firs the gentleman introduces you to each other. What do you say, dear?"
In a New York Times OpED Pitting Child Safety Against the Family Farm, Marjorie Elizabeth Wood takes on the red herring that legislation intended to protect farmworkers will really destroy the family farm."The same commercial forces that thwarted the Child Labor Amendment in the 1920s continue to stymie reform today. In an age when Big Agriculture still benefits from the laxity of our child labor laws, the reformers’ legacy is one we would do well to reclaim."
a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food
a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food
The moving target that is sustainable seafood, and how chefs should make sourcing decisions got more attention in the Boston Globe. "The public perception of chefs is that we operate in some sort of sphere that only has to do with idea and ideologies. We have a lot of practical considerations."
a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food
