July 30, 2018 — If you live on a coastline, fresh seafood means a couple of hours — or less — from sea to table to mouth.

Earlier that day, that fish was alive. Somebody caught it and took it to a dock, from whence somebody quickly delivered it to a restaurant or the market, where you ordered or bought it.

In Arkansas, where even the southern tier of counties is several hundred miles from salt water, seafood is truly “fresh” only if somebody just fished it from a river, lake or stream. In a few rare instances, a cook may have pulled it, live, from a restaurant tank. (For example, live lobsters.)

In the current culinary context, however, “fresh” seafood mostly means is that it isn’t frozen. In most cases, it’s packed on ice — well, not necessarily ice, but technological ice: gel pacs or dry ice that keep it at a constant temperature — at the dock or in a warehouse so it stays chilled but doesn’t freeze.

It ships by airplane to a seafood distributor or auction house in an intermediate city such as Memphis or Dallas. And then it’s trucked to restaurant kitchens and markets around the state, the biggest restaurant markets being Little Rock, Fayetteville and Bentonville.

By that time, it has been, perhaps, en route anywhere from 18 to 36 hours. It still qualifies as “fresh” because it hasn’t been “frozen.” And streamlined shipping methods have made that a pretty quick turnaround, according to a pair of Little Rock restaurateurs who run multiple establishments that serve seafood and a local scion of a New England family that supplies it.

‘SMELL THE OCEAN’

“When we do a special at Oceans at Arthur’s, say, halibut from Alaska, it was caught Monday and Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, it’s here,” says Manjeev De Mel, general manager at the three Little Rock restaurants owned and operated by Jerry Barakat — Arthur’s Prime Steakhouse; its west Little Rock sibling, Oceans at Arthur’s; and Hillcrest’s Kemuri sushi, seafood, robata.

Read the full story at the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette