For the best fish market deals, get there before dawn
For the best fish market deals, get there before dawn
We call ourselves Marketplace, so part of our job is exploring how marketplaces work, in all their forms. David Brancaccio and the “Marketplace Morning Report” team set out to visit five markets, all in the near-orbit of this program’s world headquarters in Los Angeles. None are financial markets in a formal sense, but all markets are financial markets in a way, right? The goal was to learn the right and the wrong moves with an expert.
Today, tricks of the trade in the darkest of night: a trip down to LA’s fish market.
The Harbor Freeway is a handy strip of pavement that takes you straight from the Marketplace LA newsroom to San Pedro Harbor. By day, you can come to the wharf and order fish to be grilled with vegetables while you grab a beer. But if you want to buy retail, the move is to come in the wee hours of Saturday morning. It’s 3 a.m.
You’ll find a set of places at a loading dock open not just to the trade, but to anyone during these hours. Mike Stahl is one of the folks running the show here. He works for J Deluca Fish Company.
“We open once per week on Saturday mornings, from 1:30 a.m. until 7 a.m. Again, once per week, only on Saturday mornings,” he says.
Normally their stuff goes to big-time food distributors that supply stores and restaurants. But if you want to get up and out the door ridiculously early, a payoff awaits.
“We have snapper filet, tilapia filet, sole filet, grouper filet, lingcod filet,” Stahl says. “Sometimes we have these fish whole as well. It just depends on what’s moved during the week and what has not.”
And the word has spread.
“I wanted some fish,” says first-time visitor Debbie Rubinfeld. “I heard about it on TikTok, and I thought, ‘Hey, why not let me try it?'”
She drove 45 minutes from Burbank.
“I took a little nap, set the alarm, got here about 10 to 1 a.m. And it was dead,” she says. “Like nobody was here. I was a little concerned. And then the guys were pulling up. And I was like, ‘Oh is this the place?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah! Come here at 2 o’clock!’ I was like, ‘OK, fine.'”
Rubinfeld made the trek for colossal shrimp, salmon, tuna collar and squid. Other folks drove over two hours. Why?
“The advantage is that the roads are open,” Stahl says. “It’s the only time that you can actually do the speed limit in LA. You’re not going to find this selection at your local fish market. You’re just not.”
The mussels, for example, were already sold out. So besides getting here earlier, a key trick of the trade: how to tell the excellent fish from the OK fish.
“I’m looking for the color of the gills,” Stahl says. “I’m also looking at the color of the eyes. But the eyes are super clear. That fish is good. Your nose always knows if you smell something and it starts to smell – it goes from fishy to really fishy, pass on it.”
Clear eyes, vibrant red gills, and, does it pass the smell test? Another tip: Come prepared, but maybe not overprepared.
“I was told to definitely come early. I was told to definitely bring your own cooler, and I didn’t know about the ice. So don’t buy ice, because I spent like 15 bucks on ice, and I didn’t need to,” Rubinfeld says.
It might be a long drive in the middle of the night, but where else can you get red snapper at half price?
Find all of our Tricks of the Trade stories accumulating here.
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