As a seafood industry journalist (on and off) since 2000, I’ve scanned more than a few pricing and supply reports from numerous sources around the country and beyond. I’m grateful for anything I can get my hands on. Market prices have a tendency to become infectious, as traders constantly look at what the other guy is doing to match a price or maybe do one better. A lot of those “other guys” call New York home — more specifically, Fulton Fish Market.
One of the biggest regrets in my earlier years covering this industry was not visiting the old place on South Street in Lower Manhattan and its coarse characters and odiferous atmosphere. So much fish moved in and out of Fulton that market prices there impacted deals on the other side of the country. That still happens, just from a different borough.
The market’s modernized and temperature-controlled replacement — The New Fulton Fish Market Cooperative at Hunts Point in the Bronx — still has plenty of life left in it, despite its decentralized location. It’s been up and running for eight years now, and there are definitely some mixed feelings about it.
In late September, I had the pleasure to shadow Roberto Nuñez, who buys seafood for the Mario Batali and Lidia and Joe Bastianich restaurant group in the city. Now, I’m a morning guy, always have been, but the schedules that guys like Nuñez keep are something else entirely. The market is open to buyers from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m., when I’m typically fast asleep, some 300-plus miles to the north in cozy Portland, Maine (my city, I’m relieved to say, actually sleeps).
Nuñez, with his lucky Yankees hat on and his beautiful handmade Japanese fish hook — the tool of choice at Fulton — resting on his shoulder, really knows what he’s doing as he works the room, and I hope you find my account of our buying trip together to be informative and entertaining. If only the pages of SeaFood Business were scratch-n-sniff, the piece would really come to life (on second thought, that’s not such a hot idea).
The sights, the sounds, the action and, most importantly, the people are what make the fish market what it is — and that’s irreplaceable. Wait till you see what David Samuels of Blue Ribbon Fish Co. and noted seafood chef Rick Moonen have to say about the place — they’re both really funny guys. Many people in the industry and throughout the city, for that matter, miss the old fish house and the camaraderie, and rightfully so. It was such a unique part of the city’s lore and lure. Some speak of it with a strong sense of nostalgia, a yearning almost, for the way things used to be.
Ultimately, the modernized structure in the Bronx is what’s truly best for the product. And if you’re in the seafood business and you’re tasked with meeting the concerns of today’s seafood buyers, freshness, sanitation and safety are obviously of utmost importance. The new facility hits all those points, minus the seagulls.
I’ve long believed that seafood is a handshake business. There are so many longstanding vendor-buyer relationships that started on a windy dock or a cold, wet concrete floor in the wee hours of the night with a simple look in the eye and a firm handshake. Trust sells seafood, and it always has. All of that is still happening at Fulton.
I hope you enjoy the story, The Market That Never Sleeps.
Let’s hear it for New York!
