The Hudson Independent

Thank you to illuminating Linda Viertel and the informative Hudson Independent for the article!

https://thehudsonindependent.com/happy-new-year-fish-friends/

Happy New Year, Fish Friends!

Sasha sells seafood indoors and out

January 4, 2021

By Linda Vier­tel–

That’s how Sasha Skon, owner, man­ager and “she­mon­ger” of Sasha’s Seafood greeted her email cus­tomers plac­ing or­ders be­fore her first 2021 pop-up seafood mar­ket at the Fit Inn (104 Cen­tral Av­enue) in Tar­ry­town. Every first and third Wednes­day of the month, from 2:30 to 5 p.m., cus­tomers can pick up what they have cho­sen to or­der from her vir­tual shop on her web­site: sashas­seafood.com. And, start­ing this Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 6th, she will be of­fer­ing her first full share Sea So­ci­ety Mem­ber­ship boxes which means she will be tak­ing pre-or­ders and of­fer­ing a lim­ited walk-in menu se­lec­tion as well.

Tar­ry­town res­i­dent, Sasha Skon, grew up in a third gen­er­a­tion fish­mon­ger’s home in New York City, en­joy­ing the fresh­est fish avail­able from the mar­ket.  “My step-dad, brother and cousin still bring fresh fish home every day; it’s been part of our iden­tity for gen­er­a­tions,” she said. Her step-fa­ther, David Samuels, still works at the Ful­ton Fish Mar­ket (start­ing at mid­night!), so Sasha texts him her or­der from her river­town cus­tomers on Tues­day night. She then picks up all or­ders from him on Wednes­day morn­ing in the Bronx so that her pop-up mar­ket of­fers the fresh­est seafood pos­si­ble. It’s a pas­sion for her, hav­ing been for­tu­nate enough to live in a fam­ily that trea­sured home-cook­ing, es­pe­cially when her two grand­moth­ers, one French and the other Is­raeli, were in the kitchen.

Af­ter liv­ing in San Fran­cisco for 14 years, then Los An­ge­les for a year, she de­cided to come back to the East Coast to be near her par­ents and in-laws. When her sec­ond child was born, she and her hus­band Nate, who works for a re­new­able en­ergy com­pany, be­gan ex­plor­ing places to live and had heard won­der­ful things about Tar­ry­town. Once the Skon fam­ily set­tled into vil­lage life, Sasha re­al­ized she wanted to bring her fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­ity from her Cal­i­for­nia life to her new com­mu­nity. As she says on her web­site, “I started Sasha’s Seafood for two rea­sons: to of­fer ac­cess to the best seafood, usu­ally re­served for restau­rants, to my com­mu­nity; and to make at-home seafood more fun and ap­proach­able.”

With those two pre­cepts in mind, she searched for a way to pre­sent her fresh seafood dur­ing win­ter-time and found the ideal venue: the Fit Inn. Own­ers Molly and Tony Canu one of the TaSH (Tar­ry­town/​Sleepy Hol­low Farm­ers mar­ket) spon­sors, of­fered their busi­ness lo­ca­tion to Sasha. They had all be­come good friends at the TaSH sea­sonal mar­ket where Sasha sold her seafood. “It was a nat­ural fit per­son­ally,” Sasha said,” And, the com­mu­nity con­nected right away.”

Her com­pre­hen­sive list of seafood of­fer­ings changes sea­son­ally: when sweet, small bay scal­lops, so del­i­cate and ephemeral, are in sea­son, she pro­vides them. Every­thing she of­fers is wild caught ex­cept for her salmon, which is farmed in the Faroe Is­lands. She and her fam­ily think it is the finest avail­able. Even Sasha’s shrimp is fresh, not frozen, a to­tal rar­ity and very hard to find in fish mar­kets. Shell-on fresh shrimp holds the fla­vor in and keeps the tex­ture from be­com­ing mushy, of­ten a prob­lem with frozen shrimp. Her biggest sell­ers are salmon, scal­lops, sea bass (both whole and fil­let), hal­ibut and sword­fish. Shell­fish are of­fered when avail­able, as will be her Sea So­ci­ety Mem­ber­ships, a lim­ited menu of boxed seafood. In the fu­ture, Sasha hopes to make chow­ders and fish mari­nades.

“She’s been my weekly sup­plier of in­cred­i­bly fresh fish the last few months. We’ve had some mem­o­rable din­ners.” for­mer Mayor, Drew Fix­ell com­mented, “She set up a pre-Christ­mas table on Wednes­day at the Fit Inn where we picked up our 3rd week’s pound+ of beau­ti­ful glis­ten­ing wild-caught hal­ibut.” Sasha says that not only were fel­low ven­dors at the TaSH help­ful in tak­ing time to set up her space at the mar­ket, but that mar­ket cus­tomers and other res­i­dents have re­sponded en­thu­si­as­ti­cally to her seafood pop-up of­fer­ings. She’s grate­ful to have got­ten to know so many par­ents in her chil­dren’s pre-school, the women with whom she is a mem­ber of Moth­ers out Front, and is en­joy­ing con­nec­tion to more of the com­mu­nity through Sasha’s Seafood.

If You Go:

Sasha’s Seafood @The Fit Inn
104 Cen­tral Av­enue, Tar­ry­town

1st and 3rd Wednes­days; 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.

sashas­seafood.com
203-536-2987