Crocetti's guarantees its customers receive high-quality, fresh proteins with a dash of tradition and customer care. The meatery is decorated with carefully hung or stacked products, which include beef, pork, chicken, seafood, lamb, veal, and items that have been gently bathed in a marinade. Bourbon Street chicken tenders (1.5 lbs. package for $7.95), pork tenders (1.5 lbs. package for $7.95), and beef teriyaki tips (2 lbs. package for $15.95) can be used for finger-food-friendly recipes, while Chinese pork sausage (1 lb. package for $3.69) and Italian hot sausage (1 lb. package for $3.69) require buns or 6-foot-long sausage forks.
In the early mornings, Lobster Express feels almost like a ghost town. The chilled seafood bins that normally hold fresh fish, mussels, clams, and shrimp are vacant, exhibiting a display of only crushed ice. The scene rapidly changes, though, as local fishermen bring in the day’s catch, filling the bins with a rainbow comprising maroon slabs of yellowfin tuna, orange salmon, and blue-grey oysters sealed in jagged shells. This transformation is a daily ritual and proof that the supplies at Lobster Express are as fresh as they come.
In addition to fresh, raw seafood, the bustling shop sells a cornucopia of already prepared foods, both hot and cold. Topping the list of customer favorites are housemade clam chowder, crab cakes, and lobster rolls, which won a South Shore Living Reader’s Choice Award in 2011. The shop also assembles take-home lobster bakes with all of the necessary components, including local lobsters, mussels, and miniature DVD players to keep antsy crustaceans entertained on the trip home.
“The Lamplighter has sampled lobster bisque and chowders from Rhode Island to Maine,” the Haverhill Gazette column The Lamp Post commented in 2012, “but has tasted none better than those at…the Pine River fish market.” Family owned and operated for more than 20 years, Pine River Fish Market earns such accolades by reliably supplying customers with fresh fish and shellfish, groceries, bisques and chowders, and live lobsters and crabs. In the store, maritime dwellers such as haddock, swordfish, conch, shrimp, steamers, and cherrystones—all of which are delivered daily—sit on ice, awaiting the day they’re thawed and can experience a strange new future world. The helpful staffers can also special order any in-season fish and have it ready for pickup the next day.
In business since 1959, Rowand Fisheries has perfected more methods of lobster transformation than the most practiced merman magician. It can conceal buttery morsels inside ravioli, pie, and soup—both bisque and chowder—in addition to selling the crustaceans live, priced by the pound. As a classic seafood market, Rowand Fisheries arrays freshly caught fish and shellfish for at-home prep, including salmon, tuna, haddock, locally netted black sea bass, and seasonally hooked items such as swordfish in Santa hats. However, its menu has also boasts signature eats that require no further finesse, from smoked-trout spread and salmon burgers to the house cocktail and tartar sauces. Patrons can even group specialty orders into platters, which gather enough shrimp or smoked seafood to feed up to 14 people.