Paul Diomede holds a freshly filleted halibut in the new Little Silver Seafood Market, which includes an area for meal related groceries.  (Photos by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
If the new owners of the former Ray’s Seafood in Little Silver look familiar, it is because they are also the owners of the still-new Sea Bright Fish Company on Ocean Avenue in Sea Bright.
Members of the Diomede family – Paul, his sons Paul and Justin, and daughter, Kim Cognata – plan to split their time between the two locations. And by April, they hope to reopen the adjoining seafood restaurant they acquired in December with the market in the Markham Place shopping center.
Among the soup options available for takeout at the Little Silver Seafood Market is a lobster bisque. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
The market features cases filled with fresh fish ready to be taken home and cooked, including some nice looking Scottish salmon and halibut, and both bay and sea scallops.
“We only use wild-caught sustainable fish,” Cognata tells PieHole. “If it’s farmed, we research and make sure it’s farmed ethically.”
“We’re knowledgeable about how to prepare the food, and happy to educate at-home cooks,” she adds.
The store also offers “grab-and-go” pint and quart sizes of lobster bisque ($15 per quart), and Manhattan and New England clam chowders. There are quahogs ($2.50 each) stuffed with chowder clams, Portuguese chorizo, onions, herbs and stuffing. Containers of lobster and shrimp salad are also available by the pound.
A mini market corner in the store supplies the home cook with other grocery options to round out a meal.
Unlike the uber-casual Sea Bright restaurant, which opened last July, the Little Silver restaurant will be “more formal in style” and open only for dinner, Cognata said.
