How Chowder Helped Combat COVID: Free ‘Small Boats, Big Taste’ Documentary Screening At The Orpheum May 29

Words play across the screen and twist away, reminiscent of a Star Wars movie, ominous, but in this case real.

 “February 2020 COVID strikes. Suddenly the world is a different place.”

As the documentary continues, voices talk about chaos and fear that ensued at the start of the pandemic; markets for seafood shut down overnight, there was confusion over what the virus was, and no one knew what would happen next.

Then a bright spot: Small Boats, Big Taste.

 “The program was to take seafood that our fishermen were already catching and turn it into chowders and stews,” said John Pappalardo, chief executive officer of the Fishermen’s Alliance. “And the first product we identified was haddock — a haddock chowder.”

The name was a play on the longstanding tag line of the Fishermen’s Alliance: Small Boats, Big Ideas.

Five years on, Small Boats, Big Taste has produced more than 1.5 million servings of chowder and stew and injected $1.7 million into the seafood economy and $2.4 million into related businesses, continuing to help small boat fishermen while fighting food insecurity.

To celebrate and call attention to the program, Truro filmmaker Mark Birnbaum created a 26-minute documentary, first screened at the Fishermen’s Alliance in Chatham in late March.

The film explores the idea’s genesis, visits with key players, and provides an insider’s view of how fish and shellfish are caught, processed, made into chowders and stew, and delivered to food banks and social services groups across Massachusetts.

The Chatham Orpheum theater will host a special free showing of the documentary, complete with a Q&A and panel discussion as well as tastings of the chowders and stew, on May 29 at 5 p.m. To get on the list, visit chathamorpheum.org/upcoming-events. 

Many at the March screening of “Small Boats, Big Taste: How a Community Combatted COVID” got to see themselves or friends and family on screen. Everyone saw shots of Cape fish piers and fishermen offshore, chowder making, interior workings of food banks and pantries, deliveries by Chatham Fish and Lobster, and intricacies of fish processing.

Joe Jolly, who owns Plenus Foods in Lowell, where the chowders and stews are created, traveled to the Cape for the premiere.

Jolly was a theater major in college — he went to school with Jason Alexander — and joked that this was his first film.

He said the program helped keep his business afloat during the pandemic and continues to make something that tastes good and does good.

 “It’s been a point of pride for us,” Jolly said. “I think it’s going to help the food system down the road.”

In the film, Pappalardo spoke to Seth Rolbein, the project’s lead at the Fishermen’s Alliance, about how quickly the nonprofit was able to turn an idea into reality in under three months.

 “I don’t think a corporation could do that,” said Pappalardo.

 “No way,” said Rolbein.

Grants secured by Catch Together (a national fisheries support organization run by former Fishermen’s Alliance CEO Paul Parker) and others allowed the program to expand.

Christine Menard, CEO of the Family Pantry in Harwich, talks about her 14-year partnership with the Fishermen’s Alliance and the 15,000 clients the chowder and soup helps feed.

 “We support the local fishing community. We get a great product for our families; it’s well-liked,” she said. “It’s a win-win.”

Greater Boston Food Bank CEO Catherine D’Amato talks about how the chowders and soups are a meal unto themselves and can be cooked in a microwave or on a hot plate if people don’t have kitchens.

She credits the Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program with state funding and for helping get the stews and chowders into the community, adding that the food bank’s investment of $1.4 million also helps power the economy.

The film takes viewers aboard F/V Constance Sea, a gillnetter from Chatham, with Captain Greg Connors and crew.

Viewers see how skates come aboard, the crew removing each fish from a gillnet and harvesting the “wings.”

They also see amusing byplay as Connors’ son, Sean, also a captain, pulls alongside in his boat, the Dawn Treader.

Captain Jesse Rose speaks about how a newer clam chowder helps fill a gap on the Cape when scallop harvests are down.

 “Anything that can help the fishermen a little bit and keep our products around here for people, especially people in need,” Rose says. “If there is room for everybody to make a living doing it and provide good healthy quality stuff — I mean, that is what most of us live for.”

Fishermen’s Alliance partnered with Cape Abilities, a Cape nonprofit working with people facing disabilities, to deliver more than 100 boxes of food to people every week. Each box contains fresh produce from local farms and a chowder or stew from Small Boats, Big Taste.

The appearance of the Cape Abilities crew in the film, including Mark Bartley and Philip Weber, was bittersweet, as the Barnstable County-procured federal funding for the program has been cut.

 “We heard last week,” Rolbein said. “Unless we do something quite dramatic, we are done.” Distributions through the Greater Boston Food Bank with state support hopefully will continue, though cuts also impacted GBFB, which lost $2.4 million in federal funding.

Part of the discussion at the March screening centered on how to sustain the program.

Captain Bill Amaru, who appeared in the documentary and supplied haddock, brought up Paul Newman. He said Newman’s Own brand could be a model, and has donated millions to charity.

Granted, Amaru continued, Newman was well-known, but “the fishing industry is also very recognizable and has a lot of personality.”

To support the Small Boats, Big Taste program and order chowder or stew (that can be picked up at the Fishermen's Alliance’s office in Chatham), visit capecodfishermen.org/smallboats-bigtaste/.