Dinner Delights Valley Store Offers Numerous Pleasures For The Palate

Don’t tell Vince Perry that red wine and seafood shouldn’t be paired.

When he’s not filleting a salmon to recommend with a bottle of pinot noir, he’s dispensing advice on other food and wine matchups from his seafood market just off Sprague and University in the Spokane Valley.

Perry’s store, Williams Seafood and Fine Wines, is a reminder of how things should be. With his wife, Margie, he greets many of his customers by name.

Need ideas for dinner? Perry has them. How about Dungeness crab, or maybe oyster stew, on Christmas Eve? Perry is ready.

During a time when shoppers seek convenience and national grocery store chains are lined up along traffic routes, Perry has been able to sustain a loyal customer base and survive amid the cutthroat grocery business.

To stay competitive, he had to expand his wine selection. Wine has always been popular, but Perry said it is especially so, now.

Washington vintners are on the rise, Americans are earning more money, and the sheer number of different and available varietals has led to a sort of winery boom where there’s something for everybody.

It has led to a change in Perry’s shop the past five years: Sales of wine now equal seafood.

He said the market rang up $250,000 in wine sales last year. In 1995, the register showed wine sales of about $3,000.

Entering Williams Seafood, however, erases any doubt about what the shop is all about.

With a huge smoker in back and fresh seafood stacked inside glass display cases, the shop is centered around seafood.

The market carries 17 types of shrimp, from whopper tiger prawns each weighing more than a third of a pound to tiny shrimp used in salads.

Ahi tuna, halibut, swordfish, snapper, scallops, pickled herring, lobster, caviar - it’s all there, Perry said.

The best seller: salmon.

The worst: lutefisk.

The Scandinavian culinary curiosity is carried on principle, Perry said. He buys about 300 pounds each year from a Minnesota maker because “this is a seafood market.”

And like retailers throughout Spokane, the last 15 days of the year determine the year’s success. On Christmas Eve, Williams Seafood puts three tons of Dungeness crab on Spokane dinner tables.

The market has been in Spokane since 1949, when the Williams family opened it. Perry began working for the family in 1982, and four years later bought the business.

His best hope of staying afloat lies in wine sales, he admitted.

“The big companies can just eat us up on seafood pricing,” he said. “So you have to do something different, personal.”

That means having a generous selection of quality fresh seafood.

To guarantee freshness, Perry will pull a piece out of the case and let the customers take a sniff.

“If it smells fishy,” he said, “it’s probably old.

“Around here, if I won’t eat it, you can’t have it.”

As for wine, his rack is loaded with selections for budget drinkers and big spenders alike.

It’s all important, he said. If someone needs a drinkable wine for $4.99, they have it. For the special occasion, there’s plenty of wines in the $30-a-bottle and more range, too.