Trident Seafoods is on a roll promoting Alaskan Pollock in the streets of Seattle, as its Fork & Fin food truck makes scheduled stops around town to bring “cod’s delicious cousin” directly to the people. On the road for a few weeks already, the mobile kitchen kicked off several Sundays ago by feeding Seahawk football fans outside CenturyLink Field.
Seattle-headquartered Trident, the USA’s largest vertically integrated seafood company with $2.4 billion in sales last year, is a major processor of pollock. The Alaskan waters from which it sources fish generally yield over 3 billion pounds of pollock per year that are used to make fish sticks, sandwich patties, surimi and other value-added products – the vast majority of which are distributed to foodservice operators and retailers in frozen form.
“It is the most abundant, certified sustainable species in the world, and it is our mission to show how [it] can be enjoyed one serving at a time,” commented Trident’s Lo Reichert during a recent interview on Alaska Fish Radio.
As part of an ongoing education program, the company retrofitted a former FedEx delivery vehicle, painted it black and named it the Fork & Fin food truck. In concert with the culinary rollout, a website was launched to inform readers: “The Fork & Fin was born from the belief that wild Alaskan fish is truly the food of the future…It leaves a much lower carbon footprint on our planet than land-based proteins such as cattle and poultry. It is our mission to show the world how delicious this often over-looked, under-appreciated [species] is – one serving at a time.”
In actuality, Americans dining at fast food restaurants have been enjoying pollock since the 1980s, when Trident founder and chairman Chuck Bundrant convinced buyers at Long John Silver’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and other chains that the underutilized fish would serve up well an alternative to cod, which had risen dramatically in price.
To this day, many casual consumers remain unfamiliar with the name pollock. So here are a number of offerings on the Fork & Fin menu that Trident hopes will familiarize folks with the species that is high in protein, low in fat and loaded with heart-healthy Omega-3s:
- Alaskan Fish & Chips, $10 – a half-pound of hand-battered pollock accented with Alaskan Amber beer, served with a choice of two sauces and furikake ranch fries.
- Alaskan Burgers, $9 – pollock with bacon, house-made cole slaw, crispy onions, dill pickle and BBQ chipotle aioli on a pub bun, served with a choice of sauce and furikake ranch fries. Pollock may be substituted with an Alaskan Salmon Burger for an additional $1.
Alaskan Beer-Battered Fish Tacos, $10 – Alaskan Amber beer-battered pollock on yellow corn tortillas loaded with slaw, smoked chili crema, guacamole, pico de gallo, pickled red onion, queso fresco and cilantro.- And then there are Peanut Butter & Jelly Fish Sticks for $9.
“It features fish sticks laid atop crispy fries, drizzled with a raspberry chipotle sauce and topped with crushed peanuts and a mixture of peanut sauce as well,” Reichert told Alaska Fish Radio.
From sea to street treat, Trident Seafood is betting that Fork & Fin will ring up new business today that will result in repeat purchases tomorrow from pleased customers shopping in retail stores and dining in restaurants.
