Surf and turf
New market and deli brings fresh seafood to Norwich
Looking around the Greater Norwich area, Tom Brodeur thought, “There’s no place to get seafood around here,” short of going to Willimantic, Putnam or Colchester. Seafood Etc. closed last May, and he wanted an option for purchasing seafood other than a supermarket.
Brodeur had been working for a beer distributor, but he was looking to get back into business ownership, having previously ran landscaping and carpentry operations.
He and his wife, Adriane Brodeur, bought the building at 1 Bridge St., which formerly housed Harry’s Occum Deli, and opened Brody’s Seafood Market and Deli on Aug. 15. Brody is a nickname for Brodeur.
“We’ve been dying for this place to open for a long time,” Lisbon resident Leah Resler said last week as she waited for a sandwich. “We don’t have access to fresh seafoods and meat.”
The seafood sold in the store includes lobsters, tuna steak, scallops, salmon, flounder, mussels, little necks and quahogs.
Brodeur, 51, gets all his seafood from the Massachusetts wholesaler Ipswich Maritime Products.
“I don’t want to have multiple vendors, because I want my customers to get the same piece of fish every time,” Brodeur said. He added as an example, “You know you’re getting the same swordfish you got
last time.”
The fish is cut every morning. Store workers also make chowders and bisque, potato salad, pasta salad, meatballs, pasta sauce and grinders. Some of the most popular sellers over the past week have been the half-pound cold lobster roll ($21.99), garlic dip, and mac and cheese.
Meat options include ribeye and New York strip steak; for deli meats the market carries Boar’s Head. Brodeur gets hot and Italian sausage from The Sausage Guy at Fenway, and beef and milk products from Wildowsky Dairy in Lisbon.
The meat has been more successful than Brodeur expected.
“We want to satisfy everyone. We don’t just want the seafood person to come,” Brodeur said, questioning, “What if you have a shellfish allergy?”
The market also has a small but varied mix of convenience store items, with lottery tickets, cleaners, pet food, chips, soda, greeting cards, baking ingredients, slushies and six varieties of coffee.
The Brodeurs have put easel pad Post-it notes on the doors of unstocked refrigerators, asking for suggestions.
The store has seven employees, including the Brodeurs’ 16- and 18-year-old sons, though the older son is headed off to college.
Upon entering, customers are greeted with a crab made from watermelon, licorice and marshmallows, a welcome gift from Versailles United Methodist Church, located just across the Shetucket River from the market.