Made in Brooklyn: Acme Smoked Fish

ACME was started by my great-grandfather in the early 1900s, and it's been in our family for the last 120 years. Adam Caslow and his family are now the fourth generation to run the family business right here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. All of these pallets here are all whitefish. We're actually the largest whitefish buyer in the U.S. This is Jacob Tupper, our guide for the day. So over here we can see the next space, and this is a big scaling machine. So you put the fish in here head first and it runs through this contraption and it removes all the scales. It does a really good job. Once the fish is nice and scale-free, it'll soak for 24 hours in a brining liquid. Then all the brined fish get hung and placed into large smokers where they'll smoke for 8 to 10 hours. And then out comes the finished product, these beautiful hot smoked fish. And what gives it the golden colour is just from smoking? Yeah, from the smoking process, yeah. This Brooklyn facility is ACME's headquarters. About 600 different smoked fish products are produced here. So this is a honey maple product we make. So we take Atlantic salmon and they run honey all over it. ACME now has facilities all over the world. But its history and legacy are deeply rooted in this building. It's turned into such a dynamic place to live and work. As a kid, I remember coming to work if I had a day off from school with my dad. I guess in hindsight, thinking about those early days, it provided the foundation that what our family had built was something really special and unique, and I'm super proud to have continued that family legacy.