Paradise Seafood Offers Fresh Gulf Taste in Cordova

The Seafood Market is open at the Agricenter International

One of the things Char misses most about New York is the food.  Especially fresh seafood.  What you get in the local grocery just doesn’t cut it for discriminating appetites.  Paradise Seafood is about the best thing we’ve found in the Memphis area when it comes to fresh seafood.

Owner Don Willadsen and his wife Jan have run Paradise Seafood for over 10 years, selling primarily in the Tipton county area.  In 2009, they set up shop in Cordova just outside the Agricenter International Farmer’s Market.  Partnering with Gulf Shores, AL businessman Ted Perkins from Perkins Seafood and Catering, Paradise delivers fresh Gulf  seafood each week to its customers in the Memphis area.  It’s the closest thing Memphis has to a coastal seafood market.

Char inspects the catch at Paradise Seafood

Fisherman in the Gulf bring in their daily catch which Don and Jan inspect, purchase, and throw on ice, hitting the red-eye back to Memphis.  The food is available the next day to Memphians with a hunger  for fresh catch.  On our most recent trip to Paradise, we picked up some snapper fillets and crab meat.  We seasoned and grilled the snapper with fresh vegetables for the best seafood dinner we’ve had in quite some time.

Shrimp, fish, oysters – you’ll find it all and find it fresh.  And you couldn’t ask for friendlier people running the place!  In fact, we didn’t intend on blogging about our junket to Paradise Seafood when we first spotted the tent – but our experience there was so good – and the food so fresh – that we immediately felt the need to tell everyone about this seafood gem off Germantown Parkway.  Paradise Seafood is now our new market for seafood in Memphis.

Char kisses the fish before grilling it. Hmmmm - now I'm beginning to get a little worried about her plans for me....

Of course, we didn’t just buy fish and leave.  That wouldn’t be very characteristic of us.  So we had to have a good time while there – and to our delight the owners were great sports!  Char, for instance, felt the need to satisfy her bizarre habit of kissing fish.  Don’t ask.  Don’t tell.  Just shake your head.  She found the just the right candidate and planted a wet one on it for the camera. I guess it’s the least she could do since she was going to be eating it a few hours afterward.

Leaving the place, we noticed the owner’s truck was covered in shrimp magnets.  While they looked great on his truck, Char felt they would look a lot better on her RAV 4.  Needless to say, there is a small shrimp on the back of our vehicle, the first official Traveling Twosome Souvenir Magnet.  And as is always our fashion, we had to capture the event in photos.

One more thing about Paradise Seafood – and this is perhaps the best news of all… they proudly posted their Health Department Restaurant Inspection Score.  How clean is the market?  How about a Perfect Score:  100.  Needless to say, we were impressed with the freshness, the cleanliness, and the great attitudes that make up Paradise Seafood.  We highly encourage you to take the drive to visit them just outside the Farmer’s Market at the Agricenter International by Shelby Farms in Cordova.

Char takes the shrimp magnet from Don's truck.

Tags: agricenter, cordova, farmer's market, memphis, paradise, paradise seafood, seafood, shelby farms, snapper, tennessee, tn

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 7:06 pm and is filed under 2. Junkets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.