I’ve never been to their first location, but happened upon Hooked’s Kensington Market location after my great lunch at Hibiscus, and a visit to stock up on Onion Jam at Thomas Lavers. I do love happening upon somewhere sustainable and unexpected! As they state, “It’s a different fish store.”
We walked into this teeny, fishy smelling space, uncertain about what we might find! Within the first few minutes, my mother had grabbed organic sundried tomatoes, she was excited that they were unsulfured, apparently hard to find. My sister was thrilled to learn that their pickled golden beets were both local and organic, so we were purchasing those as well. I saw packages of house smoked fish and smoked sliced salmon (lox) and needed some more information about it, so asked the woman working there about where it came from. Not only was she nice, but she was so well informed and able to answer all of my questions and more. Sometimes people just give me one word answers, but she was long and descriptive about all of the products in the store. I chose one cold smoked and one hot smoked fish.
Our purchases here got me excited to prepare a whole family meal presented like Charcuterie Boards are in restaurants. Here’s a peek at what we all enjoyed, including from left to right, roasted sweet potato and beet chips, RawFoodz Sea-zar Quinoa, Black Bean Dip, Dehydrated Tomato Chips (from our own garden!!), Marni Wasserman’s home made Kraut, Hooked Lox, Kind Organics Broccoli Microgreens, Kozlik’s Triple Crunch Mustard (cut off from picture are home made raw sunflower seed and greens pate, homemade sundried tomato and parsley slaw, green onion socca), Vicki’s Veggies carrots, Monforte Peppercorn Toscano, Hooked Pastrami Hot Smoked Salmon, Broccoli from our Mama Earth Organics delivery, and through the centre, maple syrup glazed sweet potato (my sister’s favourite!), Hooked’s pickled golden beets and our own balsamic roasted cremini mushrooms!
I forgot to take pictures at Hooked, but I did create a Vine Video while there, and shot an Instagram.
