Rhode Island Shellfish Co. Seriously Fresh Fish - From the Shore to Your Door By Jennifer Coates When Peter Caswell, the founder and owner of Rhode Island Shellfish Co., chose the catchphrase “Seriously Fresh Fish” to describe his West Warwick-based business, he wasn’t messing around. He wasn’t lying either. RI Shellfish Co. literally uses seafood straight off the docks, fresh out of the waters of the Atlantic. “Shore to Door” is their motto! Everything that Caswell sells, and everything he serves, is harvested or caught fresh every day. This is a promise he makes . . . and one that he keeps. RI Shellfish Co. was incorporated in 2016, soon becoming the realization of a passion and love that its owner Peter Caswell had had since he first began cooking the generation’s-old recipes of his cherished mother, Annie. As a lifetime Rhode Islander who spent much of his early life digging quahogs off the state’s bountiful coast, it was only natural that the culinary journey he started at the side of his mother would take him to this now popular take-out eatery in the city. In 2016, Peter received a USDA Grant of Inspection and built a commercial kitchen which he affectionately named “Annie’s Kitchen,” after his late mother. Thus was born RI Shellfish Co.
Today, RI Shellfish Co. is visited by loyal fans and newcomers alike. All come for Peter’s outstanding fresh shellfish and for his prepared dishes which, like the seafood and shellfish they are made of, are prepared fresh to go (though have no fear, many of these dishes are available frozen so you can keep them at home to satisfy your cravings at a later date!) Peter’s specialty: anything to do with his favorite, locallysourced quahogs. Caswell has long felt that Rhode Island’s lowly quahog has taken a proverbial “back seat” to the increasingly popular oyster. It has become one of Caswell’s personal missions to revitalize the quahog and to showcase its many varied preparations, including his famous “Stuffies.” When they first opened Rhode Island, Peter wanted to make a “true” Rhode Island Stuffie that represented the way that good seafood was made years ago. Using a recipe handed down from generation to generation, they set out on a journey to bring these Stuffies to market for the consumer to enjoy just Caswell remembered growing up here in the Ocean State.
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