New York City New Stand Studios joined as usual with John. How are you doing, man? Doing great, thanks. Yeah, good, good. Good opening.
Good to be here and not uh oily as all hell. Yeah, yeah, like last week. Significant improvement, yeah. Yeah. Although unfortunately you won't get to hear questions as though I was high from the funeral last week.
Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Uh got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels behind me. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, and since I came in here hot and heavy, but not oily, we got a full roster on the phone?
Yes, we do. Alrighty, in the upper left-hand corner, we got Quinny Quinn McQuinn. How you doing? Hey, I'm doing good. Good.
And down there, uh holding down the Los Angeles area, we have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? Good. Good. And Jackie Molecules is gonna give us a little more, a little more China update, I feel, I hope.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And today's special, special in studio guest, Casey Boyle from Doc to Dish Rhymes with Fish, the place where if you're in this area, you should be getting your fish from because they deal with both consumers and restaurants. How you doing? Good.
How you guys doing? Doing well. Uh for those of you uh listening on Patreon, we're back on our normal day-to-day, so hopefully you are. Call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
I know we got a lot of fish fans out there, so hopefully we get some people calling in. Uh, and if they want to call in, uh, but they don't know that they can join the Patreon, John. What should they do? Go to patreon.com slash cooking issues. Check out our different membership levels.
You get different perks at every membership level. Uh, one of the more fun perks is you get access to our Discord where you get to speak with the community of like-minded listeners and uh other awesome people like Kevin Young from Noma. Um and uh yeah, just a whole bunch of great people. So check it out, cooking or patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah, and if you're a cocktail person, like I said, I put a calculator on there that only uh Patreon members can use, and with that calculator and a refractometer or a density meter, if I you can figure out anything you want about the liquors that are on your back bar if you're a bar person.
Anywho, so uh here's the portion of the show where we talk about what's been going on over the past week. I'll I'll start. So last week, for those of you that listened to last week's show, uh I hit like an Exxon Valdez level for a street oil spill of heating oil, and it turns out stank up this whole studio, went home. My wife came home. My wife's like, You're an idiot.
You should have immediately like stripped down because it's toxic, right? So I'm so soaking in toxic crap. You know what I mean? And I don't have apparently, like if you're from Alaska or places where boats generally dump like gallons of crude oil all over the water, they make petro like petrol ban like cleaners. None of that works on on nothing you can get in New York City will clean this stuff out.
So I put all of my clothes, my backpack, my shoe. I threw the underwear away, but not the socks because they're darn tough. I have a lifetime guarantee on those things. Wash them, soak them first, then wash them three times in a commercial washer. Nothing.
Then soak them in a degreaser, wash them two more times in a commercial washer a little bit better. Put them in a closed room with an ozone generator, ran the ozone generator for two hours. A little bit better, still not good. So I had to dump because it stinks everything up. I had to dump everything.
Uh so the backpack, this is the story, this part I want to tell. This is a shout out to Peak Design. So Peak Design, who makes backpacks, they started for photography. People have a lifetime guarantee on their backpack. So I was really pissed that this thing I have a lifetime guarantee on, right?
At this point in my life, I buy stuff lifetime guaranteed. I want to buy it again. I walk in there, I'm like, you're not gonna believe this. Your bag is fine, except for now I can't use it because they gave me 25% off of the bag. Good company.
Yeah. Peak design. Good company. Anyway, all right. So that was uh, oh, and I had the last of uh God's tomatoes from uh Stokes.
And I went and bought so the two tomatoes, for those who don't know, the two tomatoes I buy are Aunt Ruby's, which are a green tomato, and the German stripes, and I think they're actually from the same person. Two delicious tomatoes, as grown by farmer Ron Benagi and family out of Stokes Farms, only available in New York City at the Union Square Green Market before noon, because they sell out uh on Saturdays. Otherwise, drive to Old Tapan, New Jersey if you have a car if you're one of those people. So uh on the Friday I went and saw a different farm. I won't name them.
They had the stripes and the rubies. I would try them. It's been like 20 years since I've tried someone else's. Nope. Nope.
Went back on Saturday, got the good ones last of the season. Anyway, all right, what else you guys got for the week? That's my week. That's my weekend review. What about your eggplant?
Oh, yeah. John got me some fancy eggplants. So give me the names of them again. I don't know that they were exactly correctly identified on the thing. So, like, name the farm.
Uh Suzuki farm. The purple one I got you was the Mizu eggplant. But was it though? Because it was more like shaped like a like a cannonball. It wasn't elongated at all.
Kevin calls the one that he was referring to, the Mizunasu. This one is just called the Mizu. So that this one was is purple, dense as all get out. Yeah. Dense.
Dense. And uh I tasted it raw, but that one was great cooked. Had great flavor cooked. I sliced it thin and it gets real meaty. It doesn't break apart.
Good. The white eggplant is the one that John said he ate raw, and it is slightly sweet and completely edible raw, although better when raw, I think without the skin. Skin's edible. Better without skin. But then I asked John the crucial question, which was would you eat it over a different fruit?
And he's like, no. No. He's like, but here's an eggplant you can eat raw. So I did my standard thing when I have an eggplant that tastes good and I don't want to gussy it, right? I sliced it then, soak it in a little bit of salt to draw out some, you know, whatever.
Although it wasn't bitter at all. I didn't need to do a salt soak on it at all because it was not bitter at all. Uh I didn't let it sit out to see whether it would darken and get all effed up, but I'm stupid. I should have done, I should have run a test. I should have left one or two slices out, not the stupid stunat, as they say.
So uh then uh on the air fryer, like great salt, pepper, little bit, a little bit of sugar, always and then like just like a mist of uh olive oil. Roast that sucker out at like you know, 400 and change for a couple of minutes, just a delicious. Maybe the best eggplant, maybe the best one. Oh well that I've had, but I haven't had necessarily the one that Kevin's but anyway. So there are eggplants out there, people that are beyond our standard, either like you know, what we call Japanese or Chinese or Globe.
There's more than these three or the tiny little Thai ones you get. In other words, there's there's a whole panoply of eggplant out there for you to exp one to explore. For anyone in the New York area, you can get that through Natura from uh Suzuki farm. Were you playing around with them, John, at your restaurant? No, because it's just not something that my clientele's gonna buy, unfortunately.
They're not gonna, they're not gonna pay ten dollars a pound for No. Eggplant, no, they're not. So at a f uh, what would the food cost be? So it's like it's up there with steak. I mean, not quite steak, but it's above chicken.
It's above chicken, yeah. Yeah, it's like some choice steak. Yeah. Yeah. It's at, it's at, it's at mid grade decent pork.
Yeah, that's true. I think all vegetables should be related. All fancy vegetables need to be related to their to their equivalent meat cost. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. We've never had a non-parmed eggplant on Long Island, so it's never happened. It literally never happens at the beginning of time.
You go to an Indian restaurant and it's Baba Ganoush Parm. You see parts. Or not in the weirdest places. Bacon bar de parm, I mean. You know what I'm saying?
You know what I'm saying? Bacon bar de palm. That'd be actually, you know what? That wouldn't be bad. Like a grati-made vegan vegan barta.
Let's do it. That'd be delicious. On the beach. I uh I was having this conversation with Andy Ricker chef yesterday, uh, who's in town uh doing a pop-up at Mom tomorrow uh down uh on Forsyth Street, which if you don't know, it's the Vietnamese, right? Mom, yeah.
And uh they use the tiny tables that you would actually use if you were a restaurant in Vietnam. So when you walk down Forsyth Street, you're like, what is an Ikea kid furniture thing doing in the middle of the street? And why does anybody want to eat on four by the way? Foresight, this is my neighborhood. So I know of what I speak.
A crap hole of a street. Hey, that's the way it's supposed to be. Authentic. Okay, man. Okay.
I mean, the food, great. Uh food great. Yeah. But Forsyth Street? I mean, uh, you know what?
And I don't even know if you can play an illegal game of cards on that street anymore. What's the world coming to? If you can't get an illegal cash game on Forsyth Street, you know, while you're buying like plumbing fittings, it's not Foresight anymore. You know what I mean? Whatever.
Uh all right. So I don't know where that leaves us. So anyone have anything for the week? You know where you can play illegal card games for cash in the street, it's China. Yeah, well, you know.
So you're gonna move there? Is that the is that the is that the call? Oh god. No, no, definitely not. It was not easy, but it was amazing.
Um and just shout out to Rob Lex from the Discord who had so many helpful tips for Chengdu and Chongqing. Don't worry. Not easy to navigate. Um, but man, delicious stuff. I mean, there's like too much to go through.
I had too much food. Because it was Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. And you know, all right, give us one from each. Give us three. Give us three, one from each.
Yeah, like a few things that like were of note. Uh first of all, my first stinky tofu in Taiwan, which really is stinky. I mean, when you're walking through the night markets, it's like very, very pungent. And it was hard to pull the trigger on it because of how smelly it was, but once it gets in your mouth, it's good. Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah. I mean, it's just it's a lot out there in the markets because you know, there'll be like four or five vendors. Um, and it's just like exponentially stinky. You know what I can't you know what I can't wrap my head around. Did you have any of the bat nuts when you were there?
They're they're like those water chestnuts that look like Batman. No, no, I did not. You know why though? Not good. You didn't miss anything.
I'm don't worry about it. Oh, all right. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah.
The stinky tofu is so good though. I mean, the beef noodle soup, of course, like everywhere is amazing. The the noodles, the mopo in China, amazing, amazing. Um two interesting things in Chengdu that I I did do one of the Michelin restaurants, uh, much to the chagrin of some people who don't like, you know, the Michelinistas, as they call them on Discord. But I went to U Yuji Lan, which is like a two Michelin star place in Chengdu.
And um What's a two mixture star restaurant in Chendu look like? What's this sir table service like? A house, dude. We had like it was like they put you in a little private room and they close the door on you. And it's just like ye, you know, the two of us in a private dining room, basically.
Is it just me or when I'm in a private room, I assume I'm gonna get shot? Yeah, it was a weird feeling. But I think it's me. You know, it's like being in someone's house. It was cool.
Um two things I had that I hadn't really before, uh was like really like a full-on abalone dish. Which is a it it's a lot of flavor. Abalone in that entire region just kicks, and we'll talk about this maybe, maybe, but it's not from here though. But it just kicks the snot out of abalone that I've ever had in the States. It just beats the ever loving snot out of it.
It's just when you go over there and you have Able and you're like, holy God. It's so good. They have so many good ways. Is it just we've forgotten how to cook abalone because it's so expensive here and it's all like processed like through them through the nose before you get to it? I mean, like you go to Hong Kong, you get it off a boat.
They you know, you did you go to Hong Kong? Do you go to those places where you walk up to the boat, point at the fish, and the stuff you want, they put it in the restaurant and cook it? Although I don't like usually stuff that's that fresh, but abalone, oh yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Incredi incredibly good. Um, other weird things I hadn't had before there were fish maw. Yeah, yeah.
Like bladders, I guess. Fish maw maw. I don't know. I think it's like grandma. Cram.
And then uh Imperial Bird's Nest was the other thing of dumb. What's up, Mr. Fancy Dan? Bird's nest. And now did you get the did you get the chummed up, like the chummed up reconstituted bird's nest?
It's made out of lesser birds spit and sticks, or did you get like the entire, like, you know, five people had to die to get three nests, like uh freaking like perfect, like reconstituted. You could see the whole nest in the soup with the rock sugar megilla. I more more so the second, yeah. It was a very expensive meal. Yeah, that's an expensive.
I made it I've only like the last course. I've made it twice. It's uh once as a savory, which is not true, and once with the candy rock. Yeah, and I was like, uh, that's where all that money went. And you know, even to make it yourself, it's fantastically expensive.
Yeah, you know what I mean? Just not rich enough to not rich enough to enjoy it. No. I mean, yeah. I also feel a slightly bad, I guess, to people and the birds, but it's more the money.
You know what I mean? Paying for the misery. You're paying for the misery. You know what I mean? It's a very kind of uh end of days kind of uh of food stuff, you know what I mean?
100%. Yeah. Like a shark's fin, let's say, which I've never had. You know, and and the theoretically against. If someone served it to you, would you have it though?
I know Jack would. I mean, I've that's how I've had dog, yeah, so I probably would. Yeah. I would if you're in someone's house, why did John get no why did John get no flag for a dog, but I got killed by the dog? Because I am because I am irrational for not eating dog.
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? If I eat other animals that are on the same level as a dog, like a pig, then it is my sentimentality that is causing me to not eat the dog. Whereas, which is, you know, a weakness of mine. Whereas the whale is a totally different thing, dude.
You know what I mean? Not the you brought it back, by the way. You brought the whale back. I did, I did. Yeah.
Oh god. By the way, fruit game, fruit game in Taiwan. How ridiculous is the fruit game in Taiwan? Oh my god. Yeah, insane.
I when I went there that was insane. I was not expecting the fruit to be so good. I was like, oh my god, fruit's so good. So good in that part of the world. Fruit's so good.
Yeah. Although, again, Andy Ringer yesterday was like, you know, you're gonna come to Thailand if you like fruit. Because he hasn't talked like that. But uh, what about you, Stas? What do you got?
I was gonna say that I thought that you were gonna say that they gave you the backpack for like free. Not 25% off is not that much. It's it's it's a substantial discount when what they owed me was nothing. So it's a lifetime guarantee, but the there's nothing wrong with the back other than it stinks. They can't be like, hey, dude, you smell real bad.
What if I just smelled real bad and they were like they were like, you know, uh, I needed a new backpack every month because I stink so hard. They'd be like, no. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know. I guess so.
But some companies give up their lifetime guarantee, like Ray Ban. Crap on you, Bauch and Loam. You got sold to Luxotica. Not a terrible company, but they no longer have a lifetime guarantee. You can't, you can't go to a concert, throw your Ray Bans on the ground, smash them with your Doc Martins, pick up the husk, send it back to them and get a new pair anymore.
Hell. Anyway, you're saying I was gonna say, uh, this is a question for John, because Dave and I talked about this over the weekend, kind of. And I'm not gonna mention any names, Dave. Jeez, Louise. But John, if you invite somebody to your restaurant, a friend to come and eat, do you charge them full boat?
Yeah. Do I charge them for everything? You've invited them. Everything. You have invited them.
You have said, come to my restaurant. I would not charge them for everything. There'd be a bunch of freebies, but I would definitely charge you for something. Right, but you wouldn't be like full boat. No.
If you if if you're like literally twisting someone's arm to come into your establishment, you're not a dude with a sandwich board like in Randos. You're twisting a friend's arm. You know what I mean? You charge them full amount? No.
Do you like upsell them at the restaurant and then go full boat on those folk? I'm trying to keep my language clean here. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, what?
Yes, again. Yes, again. Happened to someone else I know, bartender. Happened to someone, and he was like, I didn't have a thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket. He's like, I could have had hot dogs.
I could have had I I I could have had a beef sandwich. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that's not cool. You know? I have to say, if you're not rich, most of the time you're fine with the beef sandwich.
Am I right, Stas? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Thousand dollars just like radioactively beating through your pants into their into their coffers.
Well, listen, people, this is the etiquette. First of all, I understand that I'm old and that the days of like the massive comp and the days of like the way that it used to work, they're over. I get it. You know what I mean? But on an invite, you can't, you can't, especially if you have a fancy place, you can't just like rake them over the coals, dude.
You can't make someone, you can't make guilt someone into spending let's say your restaurant is normally $300 a head plus liquor. Let's just say that, right? And you come you're like forcing someone who doesn't have a lot of money to come in, and you're like, well, I'm gonna charge them for the meal that they're already gonna have if they come into my restaurant. They're now out like four or four fifty ahead with wine and tip. It doesn't matter that you've comped them a hundred dollars worth of extras that they didn't need anyway, because you're twisting their arm into spending four hundred and fifty dollars a person that they didn't necessarily want to spend because they feel obliged to you.
It's bad etiquette. But I think I would also expect that going into that kind of a restaurant, knowing, you know, like tasting many that they're gonna be. But if they say, hey, yo, oh, you know, me know you come in sometime and we'll, you know, have a good time, that's fine. But then don't don't go after it. Yeah.
Yeah, 100%. You know what I mean? Yeah. Stas, I think everyone's in agreement. What do you think?
I think so. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not a it's just not, it's just, I think, I think a lot of people, especially fine dining, they it's kind of like uh they lose sight of that people don't necessarily have the money to spend at those hours. You know what I mean?
It's like uh anyway. I mean, like for On the other side of it quickly though, like the annoying thing, and I've seen this happen, is if there's a new trendy expensive spot and someone is like sort of friends with someone there and they're like, Oh, I'd really love to come see you, I'd love to come eat there, and then get disappointed there's no comp. That's on them. No, no, that's on them. F you should you should expect it's like expect nothing, right?
Expect nothing as someone seeking. But it's also bad etiquette as a giver. That's why when you get the full bow check, you can't be like, what the w what? You know what I mean? Uh yeah, yeah, but don't expect anything.
But it happened a lot at the other network, you know. Yeah, you know what I don't you know what I hate? I hate the hell out of this too. I hate this trend where instead of comping industry people who are the ones who need comps, no offense to non-industry folk, but like it's the industry people that typically don't have the money to necessarily go out at the places where they work, right? They used to get more comps.
Now it's more instaweasels who get comps. The worst. And instaweasels, don't they have the money? That's the worst. That is the worst.
I mean, I get that it's business, but I mean to hell with that, man. Some things are better now, and some things are worse. You're right. You know? Uh you take the bad, you take some more, you take it up the yeah, the facts of life.
Anyway, uh all right. So uh Quinn Fish. Quick yeah, quo oh Quinn, Quinn, Quinn. What do you got, Quinn? Uh I don't got too much.
My uh dad was uh out with a hand surgery. I didn't do any big projects, but I made a nice uh real toast yesterday. My dad is getting better for he's already picking up random foraged legumes from people around town. And uh over the weekend I made a nice uh you know, oats prepared like a risotto. That turned out really good.
Wait, oat zoo, did you say oat zoto? Did you just say oat zoto? Yeah, oat zoto. Oh geez Louise. Oats prepared like risotto.
Oh my goodness. What does that even mean though? Like, so you had oat groats. You had oat groats, right? Yeah.
Now, were they pearled or they're not pearled? I don't think so. Like you would know. Okay, so they had the bran on them still. Yes.
Alright. On what planet? What was what what was Odo on earth have you ever had with with rice that was still in the husk dude? Well, still with the brand, not the brand. So you've got uh like uh so you par fried it in oil, you par fried it in oil or butter and then and then kept on adding stock to it, right?
Is that what you're saying? Liquid, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So another issue with oats, and I'm asking, I'm not saying, I'm asking, is that they are soft as hell, which is why it's very hard to mill oats into a flour, and it's much easier to flake them. And by the way, anyone who can hear me who has extra money and space in their kitchen, freshly rolled oats are ridiculously good.
Like the smell in your kitchen when you freshly roll oats is like you're like, oh my god, oats. For years I'm like, oats, they're fine. Oats. They're there. You know what I mean?
But when you mill them, oh anyway. So uh it just sounds like a savory oatmeal. Which the with it? Oh, he just busted. Joe's just busting you.
Yeah. Savory oatmeal. But what's wrong with that? I like savory oatmeal. Well, that's the different thing from risotto, though.
Like, was there the was there Nastasia, what's the word for the little nerve that runs down the center of the rice when you do it right? Oh God, I don't remember. Oh it's not Kyoto or something like that, is it? C-H-I-O-D-O. Uh anyway, was did you have that little nerve running down the center of the oatmeal?
But how can you tell the oats are so soft? Yeah, no, I didn't quite get that. Yeah, yeah. What but you like the flavor? I liked.
Was it wait, what was the flavor again? Chick was it was this a mushroom style, chicken style. Uh no, I went a pretty different uh flavor profile. We had some really nice carrots from the CSA box. Okay.
So it was like silver cooked carrots and onion as the base aromatic, and then the oats. Fried that off with a bit of butter, and then uh just water as the base sort of cooking liquid, and then finished with milk, and then uh finished with a smoked cheddar, actually. Okay, so I'm gonna tell all of your Italian friends that Quinn makes his risotto with water as the as the whole point look, I get it. Some of it's the creaminess, right? Some of it's the creaminess, but like a lot of it is the concentration of flavor, which is why you can make it a lot easier if you just hyper concentrate your liquids before you make the risotto.
Shh. Shh. Anyway, but like uh all right, but you enjoyed it? Cheddar risotto, man, cheddar water risotto oak man. The carrots are really good too.
Uh hey, listen, I appreciate a carrot, and it is true, I believe, that northern latitude carrots possibly, I'm not an expert in this, but I believe that it's possible that northern latitude carrots are better than more southerly grown or more central latitude carrots. Because the best carrot that I've ever purchased was from uh the northern Vermont, yeah, Pete's Greens. And uh he said that you can make them even better than he makes them if you are willing to mound up enough earth on top of the carrots so that they will never freeze and then keep them like into the winter. He says they will continue to get even more ridiculously good, but he doesn't have the he can't upcharge enough to guarantee to to be to pay for the amount of dirt he would have to dump on top of those carrots to get them into a frost-free situation. But I uh, you know, I believe you that your carrots are good up there in the because what are you you're even with uh if you were to draw a globe line around, what where are you?
You're you're somewhere close to like Maine or something, aren't you? Uh yeah, it sounds right. Yeah. Because I don't think it's necessarily a temperature situation. I think it's a like a day, day-night garbage along with temperature.
Who knows? Who knows? Somebody does, just not me. You know what I mean? Somebody knows, just not me.
I just know the kick the carrots are good or bad. And by the way, can we all agree a parsnip is a BS carrot? Agreed. Yeah. 100%.
Yeah. I mean, because when have you ever had a parsnip and you're like, oh my god, thank God this is not a carrot? Never. Never. Never.
Never. It's like uh, you know, no, no. It's they're good. Right? I'm mad at them though, you know.
I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. Someone's like, hey, we're having parsons. So I'm like, okay, they were out of carrots. Okay.
You know what I mean? Like, anyway. Yeah, yeah. Uh unlike, like a turnip has like, I know they're unrelated, but like in my mind, like whatever, whatever. I'm not even gonna get into it.
Okay, sock to dish. Now, correct me if I'm wrong. They're gonna explain this whole thing, but like it's only been since the pandemic that you've also been docked a restaurant dish. It used to just be consumers, right? Yeah, well, there's been sort of three distinct chapters.
Company started in 2012, which was direct-to-consumer, country's first uh community supported fishery. So we all know CSAs, right? With veg. The idea was to you know source what's seasonal and have weekly shares to local residents of the East Under Long Island. And it was a very, you know, it was a great success from 2012 to 2015.
Dan Barber caught wind of the project, helped us to launch the first restaurant supported fishery in the country. Um, and from 2015 through the beginning of the pandemic, we were serving sort of the Uber fine dining world, we know with weekly shares. It was like, you know, 50 to 100 pound increments of whatever was hyper-seasonal. We had, you know, winter, spring, fall, summer uh shares, and you know, it was uh it was great, but uh during the pandemic went uh went dormant until we we took it over. Nice.
Now uh so for those of like let's back up a little bit. First of all, I'm gonna embarrass total embarrassment. I've never been to Montauk. What? I've never been to Montauk.
Spent all my summers in the Cape, you know what I mean? So not the same, but you know, similar waters. You're one side of the fence to the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So I've never been to Montauk because who can breathe that traffic? It's freaking nuts. You know what I mean? Love Jaws the movie. Come during the offseason.
Although I think it's real. I know, same with the Cape. Yeah. Who like, you know, who who wants to go to a beach when there's people there? Yeah.
Ridiculous. Uh now September through June, it's the best place on earth. You know, July and August is pretty brutal. And also, I have to say, like, my family, uh, my my stepfather, you know, he only likes three and a half things. My mom fishing, wine, and used to be cigars.
So there's the only things he likes. But surf caster only. So he never, it's always like either hang out with him on the beach at the zero in the morning, no boats. He doesn't do boats, which is weird. You know what I mean?
He's not commercial though. Yeah. You know, he's crazy good at it though. Yeah, Montauk's the surf casting capital of the world. Well, you know, don't tell him that.
Because to him, it's like, you know. Oh, I know. We got some major beef with the uh the mascot. He's like Boston Beach and like, you know, Newcomb Hollow and like you know, uh Race Point and all those garbages up there in the Cape. Anywho, it's similar water though, right?
Yeah, similar enough. Similar enough. So I've never been to Montauk. It's an embarrassment. Uh, but this started out with just like a group of fishermen doing this, and now you have like a roster that's like like long, right?
Not huge, but long. Yeah, I mean, we source from with a couple hundred different boats, you know, in Montauk and throughout Long Island, and have expanded our sourcing radius, the goal poster now, sort of Maryland to uh to Maine, right? Oh, so that's where your crab is coming from from May from Maryland? It depends on which crab. The blue?
Uh the blue crab is depends on which blue crab is. Because blue crow claw is the same as blue crab from Chesapeake, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Same thing. We don't really have a tremendously large, you know, um commercial, you know, uh uh crab fishery on Long Island.
You see sort of bits and pieces, but it's mostly bycatch, but the industrial stuff is you know primarily coming from the Chesapeake, which is still relatively small scale compared to like the Carolinas or operations in the Gulf, and then now the vast, vast, vast majority of crab you see on menus is coming from Indonesia. Yeah. Yep. What variety are they shipping out of Indonesia? Same.
I mean similar species. It's you know, one one step removed from blue crab, but uh, you know, close enough to blue-ish crab. Exactly. Fluish crab. Blue adjacent.
Flu adjacent. Yeah. Uh all right, so where was I? Where's I going with this? Oh, so you have this uh growing roster of uh fishermen who are doing this both directly to restaurants and to people, but I think what most people won't understand is how much time and BS is being bypassed by that.
So when I went on your website and I looked at the general chain, which is quote unquote efficient from an industrial standpoint, to make sure that every human on Earth can get hit with a particular fish, right? So it's efficient for doing that. It's efficient for getting a any particular fish to someone in Topeka, but it's incredibly inefficient based on you happen to live where the fish are caught. You want to describe the difference in the systems? Yeah, I mean it's I don't even know where to begin.
It's uh it's a it's a huge difference, right? Sourcing directly from the boat versus sourcing, you know, directly from um, you know, external sources. Um but you know, look at the end of the day, you know, uh for the last couple of years I've had an office at the largest commercial fish stock, you know, uh uh in Montauk. Uh it was a tremendous advantage to be able to see, you know, boats come in, get the first pick of what's coming in, um, to be able to talk to fishermen about what's coming next to next to talk about weather. Weather has an unbelievable impact on supply, which has a supply, which then has a um huge impact on price uh and availability.
So, you know, having an office at the dock has you know life-changing consequences for for our chefs, but also allows us to have you know sort of real life interactions with fishermen and have you know sort of a bridge between fine dining and between fishermen, really. That's what's been missing. You know, chefs work a hundred hours a week, fishermen work a hundred hours a week, and there's very little known about each other's lives. You know, to be able to speak fishermen and fine dining is kind of a you know interesting hat to wear, and that ultimately that's where our value add was, you know, as the years went on. Now do you only do human being shares out there or do you you do human being shares in the city?
We don't do human being shares at all anymore. Yeah, we we've evolved past that. We our business on the restaurant side has just been overwhelming. Right. Uh so we're just trying to keep our head above water, so to speak.
Making a wave when you can, temporary layoffs, good times. Uh so okay, so from a restaurant perspective, is it's it's still share-based? Or is it just cash? So we relaunched April of 2023, uh, following the pandemic, and we initially tried to institute, you know, the the get what you get model, you know, when we relaunched, right? Don't get upset.
A lot changed after COVID, right? You know, your fish cutter of 22 years moved on and is now working at, you know, wherever the case, right? Well, what is that case? What are they doing? Like what are they because it bar is the same thing, bar and restaurant, like all these people just moved on.
I mean, it seems like a third of the staff at least, right? So restaurants were a lot less equipped to be able to deal with, you know, cutting whole fish, but they're also way more margin conscious from what we saw pre-pandemic. So the combination of which, you know, made us, you know, really have to be a lot more flexible and think on our feet. So we're like, okay, we're gonna publish, you know, uh, a weekly product list, we're gonna deliver once a week, and then once a week wasn't enough. So we're gonna deliver twice a week.
I think it was Tuesdays and Fridays, right? And you know, fast forward four months, you know, later we're delivering six days a week, you know, we're up to the city. It's all a matter of getting your volume where it needs to be. But it comes, it's uh you know, it's a double-edged sword because you have to be thinking about sourcing the entire time, right? So then you have to expand your sourcing radius, and then you have to think about logistics, and it's all a snowball effect, right?
Ultimately, the bigger you get, and it's a little counterintuitive, the better you can service your restaurants because you have greater buying power, which means you know, more affordable, you know, product. But then more importantly, on the fisherman's side, you can actually buy whole boats or you know, uh be able to monetize more of the catch they're bringing in, you know, in the buy catch realm. Right. Well, let's talk to that, because I think that's the most important and kind of most fun thing. Because I'll preface this before we even get into it.
I looked at your um product list, and I'm embarrassed to say most of these I haven't cooked ever. It's great what they offer. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah. So let's talk about the diff first before we get into that, the difference between a what we would consider normal, which is demand-based. So I want orange ruffy until they're everyone is dead. I want to buy orange ruffy until they have fished out the ledge in wherever it is off the coast of you know, in the South Pacific, until the every single one of them is dead, right? Demand-based versus supply-based.
Here's what we're getting. Why don't you learn how to cook that? And you want to talk because that seems to me to be the major shift that you need to make to make this work, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that's unfortunately, you know, Americans are pretty bad fish eaters.
Um, we kind of point our focus at one fish, hammer it out of existence, and then move on to the next, right? And uh, you know, a big part of what we're trying to do is diversify uh, you know, that's uh that program we offer a weekly buy catch box, which is more of the traditional Dr. Dish model. It's a get what you get box of the weird local thing that doesn't see the light of day. Wait, but that's for restaurants?
Yeah, John, get one for me. How much they cost? 50 bucks a week. It's like nothing. Come on, we're doing it a cost.
Yeah. But it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's all the weird crap that never sees the light of day. So, like spearing these tiny little uh, you know, bait fish. I saw them look, what the hell, what the heck is a spearing?
You can't even look it up on the internet. Yeah. Yes, you can spear fish on Long Island. I'm like, oh, they're they're I mean, that's beautiful. My kid, I have a you know, two-year-old son who was crushing them at my friend's restaurant on Shelter Island.
Shout out to Leon's 1909, and they were can you pan can you pan them and pull out the bones like a sardine? No, you don't have you can eat them whole. Oh. Yeah, they're tiny, tiny. Yeah.
Like half an ounce each. Yeah, all right. Yeah, like smaller than my pinky. Yeah. But but not caught with a spear.
No, no, no, no, no. They're tiny little bait fish. But you can cure them. I mean, they're there's a million names for them. Well, speaking of which, you gotta get in touch.
I forget this guy's name, which is stupid because I'm stupid, but he does main buycatch stuff. He has have you heard of Main Garam? I have, yeah. Have you had a product? I have not.
It's real good. And he's right now using eel guts. So he's getting all the eel guts from the processing stuff and doing a fish sauce with eel guts and it tastes like Sally Granger's garum it's got it's got that canned canned meat ishiri style like gut based fish sauce taste but uh is he doing that with freshwater eel it was a American anagi in Cambridge but so I don't know I don't remember exactly but he gave me a bottle and I was like yeah I support this but like imagine if you got someone like him in get get some value added out of the out of the yeah and there's endless pop you know potential you know and you can have different verticals right you know like couvets like wine right yeah yeah you have your spearing vertical you have a skate you have your monk t like this I mean there's so much waste when it comes to fish and byproduct of fish that it's like the possibilities are endless. It's pretty easy. Yeah anyway so you should uh I'll try to find the guy's info and we'll get you two together because it is with freshwater yeah yeah they work with American anagiol you guys work with yeah yeah great supplier all right cool uh all right so uh yeah so getting people so 50 bucks what like which one of the weird fish because there's so many weird fish in your books dude I think the buy catch box for up to you know 20 different species you know tomorrow we're doing uh uh American dabs um which is like a sand dab the little guys no they're these are a little bit bigger they're about a pound and a quarter each uh it's similar to like a flounder small fluke but it's uh you know we have endless varieties of flat fish that never really see the light of day and usually you know dabs almost always end up uh you know on the you know Asian menus and like it it's just I can't even begin to this you know I would say over a hundred species that we source are you know very rarely see the light of day in menus in New York City.
Yeah. Which is kind of what got me into this and you know to begin with. All right, well, let's let's let's go through some of these. Uh so I remember once, once years ago, I was on a boat and they caught a whole bunch of sea robins and just freaking you know, tossed them back basically dead. No one, how do you cook a sea robin?
So I mean don't say anything's poor man's lobster. If someone says texturally, it is similar to monk and it's a little firmer. Um but uh Dina Lippman, who's a mate on a boat uh out of Shinnecock, uh has a really cool of cutting them so you can you know sort of peel off the whole thing and you have a kind of lollipop. If you ever ate blowfish, it's kind of like you know, it's like a giant blowfish tail. Our blowfish is not poisonous.
No, yeah, exactly right. They're not. Huh. Yeah. So you all uh is it similar?
I mean, I've never had the I've never had the Pacific Fugu poisonous one. Is it similar in flavor just without the poison? Exactly. You can get it, and then but you have to get a different poison. If you want to get a neurotoxin, you have to go elsewhere.
Yeah, we'll have to yeah, serve as a supplement or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just we can buy it in pill form. You can buy tetrodotoxin, I'm sure, yeah, as just like a a supplement and then just lay little a souson, like a microplane. These we'll do like a tetrodotoxin batarga.
Yeah. Although if you cure it too long, you know, it will uh it goes away. Which in fact, if you take the poisonous roe from from uh uh fugu and you cure it for two years, it's no longer poisonous. So you gotta get it just right. Yeah, it's all about titration.
So but blowfish is a fantastic example. That fish is really only around for like seven, ten days each year uh in the spring. So usually last week of May, first week of June, we'll see them show up in the Peconics for a really, really quick shot. Um maybe they appear for a few days in the fall, but it's it's a great example where we have our finger on the pulse. I'll get a call from our bayman, you know, in Springs, New York, right?
So on the the north side of Montauk. Um and they're they're bonkers, which is its own really cool subset of fishermen. They're 15th, 16th generation fishermen um from Long Island. Really, really cool group of guys. Uh but they'll call me, they'll let them let me know when they're in, and we have them when no one else will, right?
So they know that we like all the weird stuff and that we'll move it to our fine dining community, and that's you know, it really helps to shine a spotlight on all the diversity that we have, you know, uh in our backyard here. And you have puffer and blow listed separately, but that's the same fish, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean uh puffer's kind of a general term, but yeah, there's yeah, very similar.
Yeah. Okay. Now, uh talk to me because uh Jeremiah at uh my restaurant, he buys the Long Island uh the red shrimp. Now that is only recent or they always been there, they just haven't been caught. Is that a global is that global warming win?
No, no, no, no. They've always been there. So this is you know one of the stories I tell the most, right? So when when we bought the company and relaunched it, I'm down at the dock, right? And I'm talking to the guys, and I see a couple boxes of shrimp at the dock, and you know, I've grown up fishing my whole life on Long Island, and I'm like, guys, you know, what are these?
They're like, oh, these are our shrimp, they're no good. I'm like, I'm like, no, no, no, no. Those are those are great. But they are used to like if they send a couple boxes to the mark market to the Fulton Fish market, you know, they might get, you know, a buck or two. And I'm like, oh my God, this is this is huge, right?
And then, you know, fast forward a couple weeks later, you know, we gave out samples to a few dozen restaurants. We have an article, you know, in the New York Times and you know, eater and whatever, and it's like it became our biggest seller, right? But what's great about the red shrimp is that they are by catch, you know, of bycatch, right? So there's only one boat that targets this, you know, this product out of the northeast, and that's it based out of Montauk. Uh, and they're primarily targeting either squid, but more often than not, Silver Hake.
Um ugly fish, right? Ugly Hakes are ugly, ugly fish. I wouldn't say that. Weird the sow saw hake. You're thinking of the really big ones.
Yeah, the small silver hake are usually only like eight to maybe you know, eight ounces to maybe a pound and a half. Oh, so they look like a normal fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean they've and again, they're not seeing the light of day in our world, right? Those are all being shipped to you know, to to other communities outside fine dining, right?
So um, but typically it's a it's a very inexpensive fish. You know, the boat would come out, and they would go out and fish in volume. Uh but now, because of you know, because of the relationship with Dr. Dish, they can go out and get their their hay catch, but then they can tack on a couple days of shrimp fishing, and I mean all of a sudden their return is like 30% greater on that trip than what they would otherwise would have received. And it's like plus good shrimp, plus great, great shrimp, right?
And we've seen up to seven different varieties of shrimp out there. Um like Sicilian tiger ponds, all sorts of weird can't curse, but stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, is is out there, and it's just like it's the wild west. For for those of you out there, and I'm not anti and I know we we can have the aquaculture thing.
I'm not anti, but however, you should just be aware, you probably are if you listen to this, but 99 nine of the shrimp you buy is raised in fundamentally fresh water. And don't I'm not just worried about whether or not it's filthy or whatever. The fact of the matter is that shrimp don't taste as good when they grew up or when they're living in fresh water, they don't have the free aminos and the flavor of an honest to God living in saltwater shrimp. And chemically treated, right? Heavily.
Heavily the hell out of them. It's just like and it doesn't taste like shrimp. No, yeah, it's a very mild chemical aftertaste. But that's why that's why we're used to first of all, and we've had this conversation when uh we had the uh secret of groceries guy on. Yeah.
It's like, you know, and he brought to my attention someone hadn't thought about it. When I grew up before aquaculture was, you know, as big as it is now, shrimp was expensive and tasted like shrimp. And now it's just like, you know, it's like the chicken of the sea in the sense that it's just kind of it's not from the sea. It's chicken chicken from the tank. You know what I mean?
And it like And now you see all the fraud issues that are so prevalent down in the Gulf, like the underspent sort of nightly news crackdown after crackdown in like, you know, New Orleans or in Florida showing all the you know the false labeling. But good Gulf shrimp is good though. Yeah, but also hard, even hard for us to source, you know, consistently, right? It it's there, but you have to be very deliberate. There's a f you know, deliberate about who you're gonna source it from, how you're gonna do it, and you know, who's you know, knowing who the real deal is is it it requires an extra step.
Yeah. And as I've said many times on the air, if you want to do a triple six and get iodine poisoning from shrimp, you must use wild caught. The iodine levels in the aquaculture shrimp are minuscule. You're never gonna get iodine poisoning no matter how much shrimp you eat, if it's not uh wild caught. So just you know, fair fair noise.
But you know, honestly, going back to the economic species is the thing that I'm always most eager to talk about because being a fisherman is hard, right? I mean, you're you're getting pummeled out there, right? So our shrimp are caught almost 130 miles off the coast of Long Island. Um, you know, trips are usually five to seven days long, and then guys go out in anything, right? If the if there's a weather window, uh if even a few days, you know, boats will run.
I mean, you're missing, you're missing weddings, you're missing funerals, you're missing birthdays. The sacrifice, you know, that fishermen make, you know, from a family, you know, standpoint to be able to put food on their plate is unlike anything else you'll see, you know, in our food systems across the country, right? And at the same time, you know, the cost of living, you know, in our ports, not only in Montauk, but up and down the Jersey Shore or the Cape, et cetera. You know, these home prices have tripled. To be a teacher and a fisherman raise a family in four in these ports is impossible.
Right. Because you have to deal with weasels from our city going up there and buying it. Exactly. We're not terrible, but you know what I'm saying. It's just, you know, but it's it's the reality.
So, you know, the average age for a fisherman is well over the age of 60, and you know, their kids are not necessarily taking the torch and you know, and carrying on, right? By and large, kids are leaving port towns, they're going on to to greener pastures. And you know, we are w our numbers are are dwindling and they're dwindling rapidly. So, how much more can a family or a captain or someone on one of these boats, and hopefully it trickles down to the not just the owner of the boat, but to people who are working the boat. How much more can they hope to make selling this route versus going to a standard commodity auction situation?
It's a good question. I mean, it depends on the product, and you know, we obvious obviously need to be competitive, you know, relative to uh, you know, to our competitors here in the city because you know, especially chefs these days care most about, you know, as much about prices sort of any other every other point. But, you know, at 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent, right? We've gone in all different directions. It very much is, you know, species dependent, right?
And and you know, dependent on the relationship of the boat. But uh, you know, there's there's always an advantage, you know, when sourcing directly. But that's a huge but it and and uh again, you know, sorry anyone who isn't uh like doesn't work in industry like this, like who just has like a salary job, but like getting a 10% pay raise is great. But in a break-even business, getting 10% more means now I actually have a profit versus like I'm sucking wind and can't even pay my bills. So it's like uh it's a big deal.
I mean even 10% would be a big deal, but like 20, 30 percent, it's like, you know. Yeah. I mean, typically they were they were saving, I mean they're making about a buck to a buck fifty more, which was well above ten percent, right? So when fishermen come into a dock, they have to pay a dock fee, call it over the dock, right? It's typically a quarter.
We ate that as a company, and we gave an extra, you know, uh, you know, amount to the dock itself to allow us to source directly from boats. So the boats coming in right off the bat were psyched that we're able to, you know, to cover that cost for them uh and the cost of shipping. So typically they're paying trucks, there's trucking companies, right? Blah, blah, blah. And they're you know, paying between 15 and 25 cents, depending on where they are and where they're shipping to, we would also cover the shipping costs.
So right off the bat, they were happy with that relationship. Um most of the time we are able to uh you know honor, you know, market pricing. So looking at what you know, our you know, biggest fish markets here in the city are selling for, if we can match that one to one, you know, they're typically losing anywhere between like fifteen and twenty percent of that sale when it's going to the market and being sold to us. So we'd way way rather go to the fishermen and give it to them uh as opposed to you know a middleman, right? So it was a very, you know, healthy relationship going back and forth and trying to eliminate as much of the supply chain as possible.
And what's the and what's the the cyc the cycle time for you guys is like one day, right? I mean, of course, that's always the goal, and uh yeah, that's always what we're shooting for. Yes. What's like the cycle time for like it? If I buy a fluke and I don't get it from someone, even if it comes from Long Island and I'm buying, even if it was fished out of the water in Long Island, how long is it taking the fluke to show up at my at my fish store?
On average, I mean it could be you know, it could be less than 24 hours in many cases. I mean, it could be up to five days depending on weather, right? So that's like that's the thing that again from a consumer standpoint or chef standpoint that folks know very little about, you know, we are subject to the whims, you know, of weather, right? So a lot of fish, you know, has to be held, and of course it's perfectly fine, and that's the you know the way the world. Yeah, yeah, in many cases better, right?
And you know, Japan, they're resting their tuna for you know, they would never cut into a quote fresh tuna, you know, within you know a couple days. Exactly. So there's benefit to that, and it's you know the way the world goes around. But it doesn't help so much with some fish though, or with shellfish. Of course.
So there's a balance with that, which is why so much shellfish is chemically treated and frozen. There, I mean, there is really sort of no uniform answer to that. But we're constantly balancing the priorities of now nearly 50 different species, you know, to uh of course provide the best possible product with the best story, the best connection, you know, to the fishermen, but it's uh they're all a little different. So other than other than your A box, what do you call it? What was the box?
Instead of like other than that, like how many pounds of something do you need before it's a viable thing? That's a good question. And again, you know, kind of annoying answer, but it really depends on how far out the guys have to go and how much quote buycatch they're you know, they're really doing. So that was the thing when we first started, we were really annoying because we were constantly trying to get, you know, a f a piece of that or a piece of this, and that doesn't work, right? The guys come back, they're stoked that someone believes in them that understands, you know, uh how hard their job is and wants to shine a spotlight on these diverse products, but at minimum, you know, fish are packed in 60 pound cartons.
You need to take a carton, that quickly becomes a pallet, which is 1500 pounds. So coming back with 1500 pounds of sea robin, you know, you got a project under hands versus you know, uh a 60 pound box, right? Right, right, right. Okay. Now, also I I forgot to ask this, but like let's say I have a boat and I go out and I have a target fish, right?
And I'm getting as much of that, but my bycatch, I put it so instead of dumping it back overboard, I know I sell it to you. Does there anyone who like this chunk goes to the regular auction market because they know that they can move a a boat ton, literal boat ton of it, and then but they know that you'll buy like all of the bycatch? It's more often the case, right? So we will, you know, again, up until recently, we are not able to buy, you know, whole boats, right? So and it again to get you know, in the weeds here, there are boats that fish under state permit that you know will go out for in day boat fish, and they have boats with federal permits that might come back with you know 50,000 pounds a trip.
So you have huge, huge fluctuations in terms of volume, depending on the boat, and they could be both fishing for the same species, right? But they're sort of wildly different sides of the spectrum. Uh so we have different relationships with different boats, but they all you know uh support the mission we're trying to do. So that that model is open, it's not an all or nothing situation. Yeah, correct.
For the for the the boats, the captains. Yeah, no, they typically you know, they'll give us first crack at you know, at sourcing directly from boats, and then you know, the rest will go to the Fulton Fish Market. All right, now let's go to conch here. A conch, however you want to pronounce it. Now gathering stuff on the beach, right?
You have they're all different species, right? But you have your periwinkle size things, yeah, your welk size things, and your conk size things. And they're all related, right? Welks don't taste as good. Why?
Is it just me? Oh, I actually think they're better. You like a welk more than like a periwinkle? Yeah, 100%. Really?
Yeah. It has that weird kind of I mean, in in the Cape. I've never caught them over here. It has like a weird like flavor to it. But you like that.
They're a lot sweeter over by us. Really? No. Yeah, yeah. Because they're like the ones that I used to get, I don't know what they're eating right off the beach, but they have like a like a fish tank flavor to them.
Yeah. I mean, it depends. I mean, there's a lot of factors that are going to increase or impact flavor, but I mean you want to have current and you want to have cold water, right? If you're cutting catching them, if you're on the bay side, yeah, I got them in the bay. Yeah, it's gonna be a whole different product.
So that's why I didn't like them? Yeah. Where bay periwinkles are fine. It's because they're small and they don't pick up much flavor from because they're not old enough yet, or what? Yeah, and that I I can't I can't speak to so good tip.
So I need to get, I've never even bought them because when I was a kid, we would gather pot, we would get like a pot of periwinkles, a pot of mussels, and a pot of whelks, and a bunch of cahogs. And then we would like cook them and I'd be like, I'm gonna be like the well, you know what I mean? But like I was getting them out of the bay, slow moving, relatively warm, like because of the sun, right? Because I was going in the shallows. So like in the super shallows there, it's often quite warm because there's a huge sun impingement in the water there.
All right. So it's actually um it was a more or less the reason why I got into Dr. Dish, because I was on a hunt for whelk, right? So like your was it your grandfather, you know, who is uh surf caster. My stepfather, yeah, yeah.
Your stepfather, right? Avid, uh, you know, I'm an avid, you know, fisherman, right? And uh, you know, one day, you know, mislabeled you know the buoys out there as being lobster buoys, and you know, older fishermen correcting me. I'm like, those are all conch bots. I'm like, conchpots, long island.
And it turns out Long Island has one of the largest conch fisheries, you know, in in the country. How what size? Show me what you're getting out of there. I mean, all different sizes, right? So all the way up to the really not like huge, but not like you see down the Caribbean, but you know, certainly, you know, eight inches.
They're the thin shell ones here, no? Or is it not like we have a couple different species, right? There's the uh smooth welk, knobby welk, we have channel welk, and they mostly, you know, from a genus standpoint are welk as opposed to conch, but you know, they're all you know, they're all there. Um you got me excited to try Welk. I mean, they're awesome.
So yeah, Ug DeFor, good buddy, you know, uh Mwell's uh chef was like, you gotta find me these things, right? Because I came back, I told them the story, and I started dialing up and calling fishermen, networking, blah, blah, blah, and then came around to dock the dish. And you know, now it's you know, it's something that we source, you know, every day. But again, it's just it's we've sourced over 125 products in the last calendar year from local waters, right? So we have NOMA level diversity on our doorstep, but you know, these things never really see the light of day.
Also, something I have had served to me once, but not enough for me to comment. And I've never cooked them other than they ended up in my pot occasionally, is I guess what we used to call like uh lady slippers or or they're gonna be like, Olympics, yeah, slipper snails. Yeah, they have a bunch of names. So how what are they what are they how first of all, how big do they get when you guys get them? I mean, the biggest, so just explain to listeners, they kind of look like you're at like an everyday rocker shell, right?
Um, and their bycatch of uh of clamming, um, typically in the Great South Bay or Mauritus Bay or Shinnocock uh on the South Shore of Long Island. Um, and they look like little, you know, lumpy shells. But if you twist them open, they crack open, you get a small, you know, anywhere from a nickel to half dollar size medallion of meat that's very similar to Avalone. Really? A half dollar size looks like a little bit.
Oh, yeah, the big ones get, you know, are awesome. Oh man. Yeah. How much do those cost? I mean.
I mean, like roughly. I mean, they're I mean, they would be, we would have to go out there and source them. There's z literally zero market for that fish in particular. But that's like, you know, that's that would be by request. I would have to, you know, throw a clam or a couple extra bucks to go get them for us.
Yeah, because the uh what's it called? Like uh just like the occasional one in the pot that is like riding on the back of whatever else you were cooking, like never really tasted much out of it. You know what I mean? Because A, the ones by the shore are generally relatively small if they're alive. You know what I mean?
Um that's one I want to try for sure. Um which clams do most people want here in the city? Little necks for sure. Yeah? Yeah.
Yeah. I had this conversation many times. Why does nobody on what you guys call, I guess, called chowder clams. We used to just call them caw hogs, right? The big ones, right?
Because there's all a lot of most of them are similar species, right? Why does no one like bake stuffed clams anymore? I don't know, they're so good. They're so good. So good.
Yeah. I had this conversation with somebody else and on the show, I think last week. Why don't people eat that anymore? And they're so abundant. Yeah, Stasla doesn't like them, but I don't think she likes Do you like clam chowder, Anastasia?
She left. Oh, she left. All right. Now she's like, I have crap on you people. Crap on you people.
That's how much she likes clam chowder. Yeah. Well by you, Jack. You like clam chowder? Yeah.
Well, you're fine. But you don't like stuffies. We had this conversation like last week. Yeah. Weirdos.
Hey, I didn't also more. I didn't know we had mantis shrimp off of our coast. Yeah. It's pretty wild. I mean, they're extremely abundant.
Umta shrimp. If you've only ever had pre cooked frozen mantis shrimp. Let me just tell you one thing about those things. They suck. They suck.
But a fresh mantis shrimp is a good thing. Correct. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. They're great. Yeah, but I didn't know we had those.
Yep. Uh what else? Like, there's just a whole bunch of things that I wish I could have gotten. I don't even know what they are. Like cobia.
Is that a good to eat? Cobia, it might be the best. Really? The single best one. Come on, really?
Yeah, typically they're caught in the Carolinas. They're a cool fish. When you're out fishing, you'll see them lurking on the water. Um, you know, primarily in like tunic grounds, like inshore tunic grounds, like 15, 20 miles off. But now they're coming into our base, like in the spring and early summer, you'll see them floating on the on the surface.
They get huge, right? I mean, you can catch them up to 100 pounds. And from what the internet says, they're related to the Ramora and they eat a lot of shellfish, so they should taste pretty good, right? Yeah, incredibly high fat content, delicious fish. I mean, since we're getting well, like uh we're have to be done soon.
Um be interesting to me is that there's so many things that I've never cooked here, Cusk. Like that, like it would be good to know kind of like, okay, treat like mackerel, treat like this, like so that like chefs could plug and play on like stuff that they know because we all have ways that we cook mackerel, we all have ways that we cook flat fish. We all have you know what I mean? So, yeah, we and that's one one thing, you know. We're not just like sales reps when we're out there.
Most of us have cooked in kitchens. You know, myself, you know, personally, you know, that's uh an obsession cooking fish. So we definitely help to plan menus and we let chefs know hey, you can count on this fish to be to run for specials on weekends, or you can consistently menu it for you know for a season at a time. You can, you know, blackfish I saw on there, you know. You know, this is a few.
Oh my god. Great location. Are they the meanest fish on earth? When you get them on the boat, they're just not just amazing, but again, incredibly high-fat content fish. They feast primarily on a diet of crabs.
I mean, they are delicious. They never see the light of day on local menus. Mean, mean suckers. Uh our razor clams, by the way, are God's razor clams, specific razor clam people. If all you've had is specific razor clam, you haven't had a razor clam.
Uh yeah, those are the best too. And we Razor Clam season opens back up November 15th on Long Island. Tani, Tommy Garpy, our bayman's who we source from, he's he's the man. And uh yeah, there's nothing better than a truly fresh razor clam. Alright, sorry, one more thing.
Sorry, Joe. Uh your perch, there's freshwater perch or is there an ocean perch I'm not aware of? Ocean perch, they have a million names, you know, ocean perch, Acadian Redfish, Boca Negra, they're all the same, you know, sort of they're all the species with same species with different names. Uh we we menu them as boca negros, which is what the Portuguese uh community in New Bedford calls them because they look like boca negra over uh on the on the other side of the world. You do you do any fish when they're on the way back way back in like Shad or no?
No. All right. And last, you should get in touch with Michael Fabro from ceremony because he's putting Ikajima machines on boats. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We're we're yeah, we're very familiar.
All right, cool, cool. All right, well listen, Casey. Uh thanks for coming by. It was uh fun having you go to uh uh uh Doc Doc to Dish rhymes with fish, and uh if you're a restaurant, if you're not suck it, go to those restaurants. All right, thanks.
Cooking issues.
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