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Fresh Salmon at Your Door? Hooked on Fish Delivery Launches in Rogers Park

By Benjamin Woodard | November 4, 2014 5:18am
 Karen Wollins holds a New Zealand Tai snapper last week before delivering it to a customer.
Karen Wollins holds a New Zealand Tai snapper last week before delivering it to a customer.
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DNAinfo/Benjamin Woodard

ROGERS PARK — The Midwest isn't exactly known for its offerings of fresh seafood.

But seafood lover Karen Wollins plans to help change that perception.

The 54-year-old Ohio native has launched Hooked on Fish, a delivery service that brings the same seafood found in the city's best restaurants right to your front door.

"We just don't know good fish," Wollins said of Midwesterners who don't have it consistently available.

Ben Woodard says the fish would only be a few days old from water to your table:

Wollins said she mainly works with a restaurant seafood distributor on the Northwest Side to get the best fish possible, before she headed out to deliver 10 pounds of raw salmon from Ireland and Tai snapper fished from the waters of New Zealand.

The fish is both wild-caught and farm-raised. Wollins has never sold previously flash-frozen fish, but didn't want to rule out that possibility for the future.

The salmon she planned to deliver late last week was bright red with a healthy shine, while the snapper had yet to be scaled and filleted.

"I'm trying to get the freshest seafood I can get," she said. "I want to know where it's from and that it's sustainable."

She doesn't sell overfished species.

Hooked on Fish follows the CSA, or community-supported agriculture, business model, in which customers pay upfront for a portion of a local farm's harvest, delivered on usually a weekly basis. But rather than "farm-to-table," Wollins follows a "boat-to-table" mantra, she said.

Wollins promises about a pound of fish each delivery to her customers twice a week.

For a one-time delivery, she charges $22. She also offers subscriptions, such as four deliveries for $80. The types of fish offered vary, depending on what's available, she said, but she tries to give five days' notice to customers based on what her distributors believe will be available.

For now, Wollins is personally delivering the fish on ice, but only to fellow Rogers Parkers. She said she meets her other customers at central drop-off locations, which include The Chopping Block in Lincoln Square and at the Merchandise Mart.

"On either coast, this is a big thing," she said, adding that similar services in New York "can't keep up" with demand.

She's hoping for the same reaction in Chicago.

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