Credit: Photo by John Anderson

K&S Seafood

Cedar Park Farms 2 Market and Barton Creek Farmers Market Saturdays, 9am-1pm; 512/801-5366

Big News: Fresh Gulf seafood is available at Austin-area farmers’ markets again! K&S Seafood has stepped into the breach to fill the Austin demand for (reasonably) local, ultrafresh seafood. K&S stands for Kim and Scott Treaster, a local couple who make up the entire operation.

Every Thursday, Scott gets up at 5am, drives down to the Gulf, and spends the day stopping in small towns along the coast to buy shrimp, oysters, crab, and fish directly off the boats. It’s all packed in ice and brought back to Austin, and Friday is spent packaging and labeling the seafood in the K&S commercial kitchen. Come Saturday morning, they each take a market and sell direct to the public – Kim at Barton Creek Farmers Market, Scott at Cedar Park Farms 2 Market. Their prices are surprisingly low for the amazing quality and freshness, and as an added bonus, some of the fish is available scaled, filleted, and portioned.

The shrimp are from “The Shrimp Capital of the World,” Palacios, Texas, (jumbo $13 per pound, medium $11). Oysters ($10 a pint) are from Seadrift, Texas, as are the lump crab ($9 per half pound), crab claw meat ($7 per half pound), soft-shell crabs ($6 each), and crab fingers ($14 per pound). Whole pompano, whole flounder, whole red snapper, and whole Caribbean snapper sell for $8-$14 each. In addition to the Gulf seafood, K&S occasionally brings Atlantic scallops ($6 a half pound) and Canadian wild-caught salmon fillets ($6-$11).

“If there is something a customer wants, a particular type of fish, they can request it from us at the Saturday markets, and if we can possibly get it for them the following Saturday, we will,” says Kim. “If it comes in on the boats, we can certainly buy it and bring it on up.”

This article appears in April 13 • 2012.

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Kate Thornberry worked in renowned Austin restaurants for 30 years while pursuing a reasonably successful career in music. She began contributing to the Chronicle in 1988 and became a regular contributor to the food section in 2006.