Rick Lofstad of Pura Vida Fisheries, photo courtesy of concretefood.com
Rick Lofstad’s grandfather was a whaler who left Norway for America in 1919. He had three sons, and between them, they had five boys. Today, Rick, his brother, and his cousins are the third-generation of Lofstad fishermen operating in the Atlantic Ocean.
He knows the best way to cook any kind of fish because his father “was the worst cook ever.” The elder Lofstad also upheld a Norwegian superstition: You don’t bring meat on the boat. His mother cooked meat dishes for the family, but his father wouldn’t pack her lunches for his days at sea. “If you bring meat,” Rick explains, “it means that you don’t think you’re going to catch any fish.”
During their teenage summers, Rick and his brother worked on deck with their Dad, often for 18-to-20 hour stretches. At sunset, the boys – tired to the bone and ravished – watched their father prepare dinner by the dimming light.
“He’d steam some fish, open up a can of Franco-American spaghetti and a can of green beans, and throw it all in the same pot,” says Rick with a hearty laugh. “I started trying to find the best way to cook every fish that came out of the ocean.”
While Rick didn’t learn his culinary prowess from his father, he did learn his life’s work. Thus far, fishing has brought Rick and his family both high tides of prosperity and near devastating droughts. In the late 1990s, they had grown their business to 80 employees between their seafood export company and a bustling stand at the Fulton Fish Market. Then came the events of September 11th, 2001. Rick shares, “I was really vulnerable at the time. I had got thinking nothing could ever go bad because everything was going so good. But I couldn’t stay in business. So I went back to where I came from: me, my dog, and a little boat.”
From that one boat, he began to sell his catch at one farmers market. Now, through the years since, the Lofstad men have earned a devoted following of people who find them every week at many farmers markets, including Down to Earth Markets. It’s a new life that Rick relishes, as he says, “I could never expect anything better.”