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“Fica a dica” means “here’s some advice” in Portuguese.

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As you all know, one of the reasons the Owl is obsessed with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is the element of surprise that comes every week. Like “check out these weird bumpy veggies, let’s find a recipe for them” or “wow, 40 heirloom tomatoes, now what?” Favorite discoveries have been garlic scapes, kohlrabi, and amaranth.

What if such a thing existed for say….seafood? And so it does, and it’s from Acton and delivered in Weston–Captain Sven’s or Svenfish or red cooler by the side door, for those in the know.

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As a family, the Owls are terrible at getting out and buying fish. Captain Marden’s is great, Market Basket and Costco have their moments…but they’re missing the element of surprise which is what we get every week in a little red cooler. The variety of fish and seafood and the quality — it’s going to be pretty hard to get me to buy anywhere else now that I know.

Svenfish is set up for individual ordering or you can put your order on subscription. Our favorite for our family of four: the Captain’s Choice Large Subscription which cost $65 when we signed up, but I see has now moved to $72. Inflation, you know. For $72, you get four pounds of fresh seafood (and I mean really really fresh) which you can either choose to manage a bit (you can say no salmon or no shellfish or whatever), or you can go with an element of surprise. Which is cool.

This is how the delivery usually goes in our house–we have a Wednesday delivery and it usually comes around noon time, and I swipe it from the side door after leaving out last week’s cooler. Then it’s discovery time! What are this week’s fishies? This week we had flounder, cooked shrimp, salmon and something I never saw because I was in Chicago and it was gone by the time I got here. Kids cooked it. Good owlets. We were going to ask for no more cooked shrimp since we know how to cook it ourselves but then…we discovered how good their shrimp is, and then the one pound is really a pound of shrimp meat which is nice.

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Salmon or tuna almost never make it to the cooker. The owlets snag that hunk of fish, slice it up into chunks, cook up some jasmine rice, cut up avocado, cucumber, nori (seaweed) and drop on some sesame seeds and BINGO! Poke bowl! It is our favorite Wednesday night meal so you will never ever see us in a sushi place on Wednesday nights. If this all sounds nice but you have no slicer-dicer kids at home, Svenfish also delivers a pre-made poke bowl…but really…why would you…?

We’ve learned to bread cod and fry that, made monkfish into a tropical dish and one heavenly night was scallop, simply broiled, soft, delightful. Two nights ago, Mr. Owl turned flounder into a baked masterpiece. It’s been fun coming up with recipes–one night we’re going to do a Cooking Challenge where each of us gets one fish and makes it into something. Loser does the dishes, winner is actually all of us.

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So far we are enjoying the element of surprise of the Captain’s Choice but you can add on many items to your weekly haul, some of them pre-cooked like various chowders and stuffed seafood etc. I am obsessed with the Oyster Bar delivery–one day I shall splurge. They also have items from local Vermont farms–meat, cheese, eggs, maple syrup. If you are hungry and want to torture yourself, just head over to their website and browse. I’m not even hungry but research for this story is somewhat killing me. You can also sign up for their Dock Alerts which is a weekly newsletter that tells you about the week’s fresh catch and recommended items and even sale stuff …

One of the best things about Svenfish is its flexibility. Want to skip a week? Want to pause while you head to your summer island? Just head over to the subscription page on your account and change it. Want to add items, ask for a fish to never appear in your household or anything else? It’s all possible from your account page.

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The only thing I have not figured out how to do yet is to find Captain Sven to tell him what a good thing he/she/they have going on. These Acton people are elusive. Probably they are working on the Acton-Boxborough HS logo which is actually a pretzel, maybe. Svenfish’s logo is fine. Just that A-B…wow…

If I find the folks in charge, the Owl will be back with an interview, I promise. In the meantime, if you are a seafood lover, give it a try. Oh and by the way, no goods or services exchanged hands for the sake of this post. Just the stuff I paid for. And ate.

You can find out more about how it works at their website here: https://svenfish.com/pages/how-svenfish-works

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• All product photos credit Svenfish