Tauber’s Fish Store Expands with Seacress to Offer Elegant, Prepared Foods Next Door

By Yehudit Garmaise

  For Yidden who want to give mishloach manos to machatunim, business associates, and friends, Seacress, a new business that grew out of Tauber’s Fish Market in Williamburg, now offers four types of savory, parve, and elegant gifts of food and wine with fun Purim innovations, such as baked salmon hamantaschen with three types of dressings and six different kinds of herring, served with crostini. 

   In fact, with herring that is prepared in-house in 40 or 50 different ways, Mr. Tauber said Seacress has one of the largest selections in Williamsburg.

     For Purim seudas, Shabbos, Yom Tov, kiddushin, and simchas, Seacress sells beautiful platters with different kinds of fish that are seared, cured, and smoked.

     While some people “cold-smoke” their fish by using a chemical, Seacress, smokes “the old-fashioned way: over wood chips,” Mr. Tauber said. “People appreciate it.” 

    Not only are the store’s mishloach manos and fish platters, Shabbos take-out, and every day lunch take- out beautiful and delicious, they are healthy: no preservatives or food coloring, and everything is made from scratch, Tauber explained.

     Seacress has updated the looks and tastes of traditional fish platters, by offering fresh and colorful dishes that are beautifully prepared, such as herring platters with lox, matjes jalapeno platters, Asian torched sushi-grade tuna platters, gefilta fish platters, and, of course, an updated and elegant whole smoke fish platter.

  “My family has had this business for 63 years now, Baruch Hashem, and we have always been about quality, freshness, and taste,” said Mr. Tauber, whose great grandfather Yossi Tauber, a”h, first opened the store in 1958.  “But we had the idea to bring our fish into 2021 with different types of dishes that you won’t find anywhere else.

   “We took eating fish, and we took it up a notch.” 

  One customer, for instance, just ordered a side of salmon, but also said, “Deliver us something really amazing,” Tauber recounted.

   “So in addition to a large salmon fillet, we included our herring, salmon hamantaschen, and our in-house dressings as a custom-made order,” said Tauber, who helps out in the store in addition to running a real estate business and whose father, Mr. Chaim Tauber now runs the store. “That is going to make a statement.”

   In addition to helping customers prepare for Purim, Seacress provides any prepared foods Yidden need to supplement weekday or Shabbos meals,” Mr. Tauber said, whose grandfather Reb Yechiel Tauber, shlita, still learns half the day and comes into the store in the afternoons to help out.

   Salads, kugels, fish spreads, and 28 kinds of dips are all prepared and ready-to-go on the shelves.

   “Every Friday, you can come in and buy your fish course and anything parve you want for Shabbos.  Everything is beautifully prepared and displayed.”

     In addition, every day, Seacress also offers fresh lunches that they heat up for customers. The store calls the lunches “the Healthy Choice” because everything is parve and comprised of different kinds of fish: tilapia, flouder, salmon, and turbo. 

   Customers who want to pick up uncooked fish to cook can still stop by Tauber’s Fish Market, which is right next door.  

   “So many people send others mishloach manos that never get eaten or even opened,” Mr. Tauber said. “But nice, classy, savory mishloach manos, you can be rest assured, people will eat by the seuda. 

   “Plus, they will be blown away by the taste and the quality, and they will be coming back for more.”

   Readers interested in sending Seacress mishloach manos should get their orders in by Wednesday at 11:30am so they are delivered on Purim. Drivers within Brooklyn charge $10, while deliveries to Monsey are $12. Readers can WhatsApp (718) 388-5380, or send e-mails to [email protected].