Seafood market opens in west Boise

Louie’s Wild Alaskan Seafood has opened at 9176 W. Fairview Ave., next to Jack in the Box at the corner of Maple Grove Road.

Situated in a wooden shack, Louie’s is a seasonal, family-run market owned by Louie and Karina Holst, who along with their four children spend the spring and summer months on the deck of their 52-foot catcher-processor in Sitka, Alaska.

After wrapping up the fishing season aboard the FV New Venture, the family ships its entire haul of troll-caught, blast-frozen seafood to Boise to sell at the retail shop, which is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.

“All we sell is fish we catch, process and freeze on board the boat,” says Louie Holst, who’s fished commercially in Alaska for 31 years.

The market’s cryogenic freezers are packed with vacuum-sealed king and silver salmon fillets, rockfish, ling cod, spot prawns, coon-striped shrimp and even octopus.

The seafood is blast-frozen at minus 40 degrees within an hour of catching it, Holst says.

Louie’s Wild Alaskan Seafood also ships its products. For more information, go to wildakseafood.com.

This is an excerpt from the Food Notes column in the Friday, Dec. 4 edition of the Idaho Statesman’s Scene magazine. Read the complete column here.

This story was originally published December 4, 2015 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Seafood market opens in west Boise."