Ruggiero Seafood Inc. has introduced ready-to-serve gourmet salads under its Fisherman’s Pride label. Featuring high quality, previously-frozen ingredients, the line’s five varieties are: Seafood Salad, Calamari Salad, Scungilli Salad, Mussel Meat Salad and Pulpo Salad.
Meanwhile, the Newark, New Jersey, USA-based company is offering 100% net defrosted weight Blue Label and Red Label Calamari in 2-4″, 4-6″, and 6-8″ tubes and tentacles units, as well as tubes-only packs.
On the fried seafood menu, Fisherman’s Pride Panko Breaded Calamari Fries go from freezer to fryer to plate in just a few minutes. Approximately 50 pieces come per 2.5-pound box. Current pricing is $3.65 per pound, FOB New Jersey.
About Ruggiero Seafood
Headed up by Rocco Ruggiero, who joined the family fish retailing business in 1971, today’s president recognized early on that there was growing demand for calamari. Abundant in the Atlantic Ocean off the eastern shore of the United States, the resource was not being significantly fished and processed locally, even though Lologo Pealei calamari was a superior species to the imported variety. Ruggiero revolutionized the American calamari industry by designing state-of-the art equipment that could clean domestically-harvested calamari quickly and inexpensively, making it competitive with hand-prepared imports.
In 1981 he opened a seafood processing plant, the first of its kind to process fresh, frozen and breaded products from locally-caught calamari. Today the fifth generation, 86-year-old company’s assortment of domestic and imported products range from lightly breaded calamari rings and fries to octopus, cuttlefish, swai fillets, clams, mussels and seafood salads. Its main clients are in both the retail and foodservice sectors.
