Five million kilos of fish
Back in time. We are writing around 1916, when Johanna Schmidt stood with a fish cart at the market in Rotterdam. Slowly but surely, her trade grew into a popular fish shop in the city center. Grandma Schmidt, as she is lovingly called here, still adorns the wall with a black-and-white photo in the enormous new building in the Spanish Polder in Rotterdam. Would she ever have suspected that her business would grow into an internationally operating company that processes about five million kilos of fish per year? With distribution centers from Qatar to the Antilles? A place where it fills up daily with locals, chefs, restaurateurs, and business people who come from all over the country to have a bite in perhaps the most famous fish shop in the world?
23 degrees below 0
We are also invited to join for lunch. But before that, we first get an extensive tour of the building, which opened its doors in 2015 and is shaped like a gigantic ship. Nice detail: the opening was performed by Queen Máxima and from September 2016 Schmidt Zeevis is allowed to bear the title 'Royal'.
Denis de la Rie, former chef at Huis ter Duin and commercial manager at Schmidt since 2006, is our host. He tells us everything about purchasing processes, product development, sustainable fishing, and the importance of considering the seasons. With great one-liners like “fish is not always fish”, “no is dead” and “if you have a head there, you have a tail there” (meanwhile holding up a gigantic monkfish), he leads us deeper into the belly of the building. Past impressive machines that steadily produce chunks of salt ice, past the wet cells where the oysters and lobsters are located, past crates full of fresh fish in all kinds and sizes, past freezing cells where we went 23 degrees below 0. It is at least impressive: more than 133 types of fish and other sea creatures, sourced from all the seas and oceans of the world, are processed and distributed here daily.
Full speed ahead
It is clear: Schmidt Zeevis is an institution in Rotterdam, but also far beyond the city limits of 010. When we drive back to Amsterdam after that delicious lunch with a well-filled cooler bag and a big smile, we encounter a Schmidt truck twice. Full speed ahead, on the way to the kitchens of the Netherlands' finest restaurants.
