Hsiang-Hsiu Hung, the manager of Tainan, Taiwan-based seafood company Fisherman’s Hometown International, is trying to spread the word to Western markets about a fish that is little known outside of Asia: milkfish.
Milkfish gets its name from the whitish color of its scales, and is a popular cuisine staple in Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other Asian countries.
Though the fish might be little known in Western markets, to Hung, it is a family tradition.
“My grandpa was a fisher for 50 years, my parents then manufactured milkfish for 20 years, and now me and my generation have been at it for another 20 years – about 100 years of my family line has been involved with milkfish,” he told SeafoodSource at the 2025 Seafood Expo North America, which ran from 16 to 18 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Cracking the North American market has been no easy feat for Fisherman’s Hometown International, but Hung credits the time he spent studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., as pivotal to understanding what Western consumers like when shopping for fish.
“If you are Asian, you know what milkfish is, but if you are not, you probably don’t. Some of my friends at school were from all over the U.S. and Europe,” he said. “Every time I wanted to sell a product, I would ask my friends if they knew the fish I was talking about. They often didn’t know. But, they would tell me the type of fish they like to buy and in what form, which helped inform me on how to get the right target audience.”
With that experience to draw on, Hung and Fisherman’s Hometown attended SENA for the first time this year …
