Mike's Seafood - Shenandoah, PA

123 S. Main Street, Shenandoah, PA 17976

http://mikesfreshseafood.com

Photo courtesy of Google Maps

Mike Breslosky grew up in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, a former coal-mining town approximately 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia. After a stint in Viet Nam, the veteran decided to go south to college in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he learned culinary arts.

Not long after, he met a Bostonian who ran a fresh seafood restaurant. “He took me under his wing,” says Breslosky. Not only did his career seem to take root, but Breslosky also met a waitress from Freeport, Maine who worked at the restaurant. That waitress later became his wife.

Thirty-seven years later, he and Joyce are still going strong and running their own seafood store back in Breslowsky’s hometown. It was his culinary skills that brought him back, but he was unaccustomed to cooking the beef and pork at the country club restaurant and returned to seafood.

He scraped together some savings and opened Mike’s Seafood in 1984 on Main Street. The family lives upstairs by night and by day works to serve the community with one of the only fresh seafood stores in the area. “We get people driving in from a 40 mile radius,” says Breslosky.  The type of seafood he offers cannot be found at supermarkets.

Breslosky deals directly with fisherman, clammers and crabbers. Every Tuesday at midnight, he makes the 110-mile drive to Philadelphia to meet the trucks at cold storage freight. Customers in the know will find the freshest offerings just after he pulls into his shop early Wednesday morning. Fresh haddock, salmon and flounder are some of the most popular purchases. The shop also carries three different kinds of crab, four different kinds of lobster tails and just about every other item that comes from the sea: clams, scallops, shrimp, octopus, swordfish, monkfish and tuna are among them. Every summer, it’s the hard shell crab from Maryland that customers grab up by the dozen or bushel.

In 1992, Breslosky expanded the business for a while, having a restaurant right next door. It was open for 21 years, but closed when he turned 65. Today, his wife, Joyce, still makes homemade salads and soups on a daily basis for their shop.

Now 67 and thinking about retirement, Breslosky is happy his sons – whom he first put behind the counter at age nine – have taken an interest in trying to run the store. “Both of our sons have worked in the store for many years and either would be qualified to take over,” he says.  Breslosky admits that dedicating more than 30 years to the business made him miss out on a lot of other things. However, having served three generations of families who come into the shop, he also admits “it’s hard to walk away from all the memories.”