The Menu, NYFOOD Museum, September/October 2006 - VIEW IMAGES
The New York Stock Exchange of Seafood
At 4 A.M. in late May, a sliver of moon is barely visible overhead in the South Bronx. Most of Hunts Point, home to the New Fulton Fish Market, is dark and deserted. Inside the market, industrial lights focus on glistening fish; buyers and sellers haggle over prices; mini-forklifts, called high-lows, zoom through the wide middle corridor of the vast building, shifting and delivering seafood.
“It’s the New York Stock Exchange of seafood,” said George Maroulis, the market manager.
The original bustling, open-air market, the largest in the country, grew up around the city’s wharves in the early 1800s. It was famous for many things besides fresh fish: rats, notorious for their size and boldness, scavenged the market’s dirty and bloody ice-strewn floor, which drained slushy water through holes into the East River below. Raw sewage was also a problem. A political attempt to “fix” the market in the 1980s resulted in lawsuits, but not renovation, and eventually, a move to the Bronx was mandated. Overseen by the Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization set up by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the plan took several years to implement.
By the 1990s, the old Fulton Fish Market, although still active, colorful, and boisterous, was technologically outdated and increasingly hemmed in by the city’s growth and development.
New York City built the $85 million state-of-the-art New Fulton Fish Market to retain the region’s valuable wholesale seafood industry. A 1999 seafood industry study estimated that the original Fulton Fish Market contributed about one-third of the New York’s total seafood industry of almost $8 billion. Economic data is not yet available on the new market.
The new market began in November 2005. Open daily to buyers from 1:00 a.m. to 10:00
a.m., it resembles an airplane hangar, feels like a refrigerator (it’s cooled constantly to about 40 degrees F.), and smells as fresh as a modern supermarket. About 40 wholesalers have moved into the New Fulton Fish Market, which is second in size worldwide only to the Tokyo’s Tsukiji wholesale seafood market. Maroulis estimates that the New Fulton Fish Market will handle about one billion pounds of seafood in its first year of operation.
Despite the vastly different characters of the old and new markets, “It’s business as usual up here,” said Johnny Clams, who has been a salesman for Arrow Seafood for 35 years.
Seafood is flown and trucked into the market from all over the world: branzini from the Mediterranean; cockles, barramundi and John Dory from New Zealand and Australia; Brazilian parrotfish; scallops off day boats out of New Bedford; live soft shell crabs from North Carolina; groundfish, whiting and monkfish from Long Island; and swordfish from up and down the East Coast.
Every day in the early morning hours, large retail buyers, chefs, and an occasional retail customer arrive to buy their seafood at the New Fulton Fish Market. The 1999 seafood industry study estimated that the old Fulton Fish Market sold about half of its products to the retail seafood markets and approximately one fifth to restaurants in the New York City metropolitan area, but the current breakdown is not yet known.
This past May, Pat Zollo, owner of Metropolitan Fish Market in Brooklyn, shopped at Arrow Seafood for high quality seafood to satisfy his demanding retail customers – young people he described as yuppies. “They’re getting educated,” Zollo said. “They want to eat wild fish, caught on a line-and-hook.”
Bennie Conte, owner of Conte’s Seafood in Mount Kisco, also searched for the day’s freshest catch for his family’s restaurant. He bought black sea bass, soft-shell crabs and day boat scallops up from New Jersey.
Many chefs frequent Blue Ribbon Fish to handpick the day’s catch. David Samuels, the company’s fourth-generation owner, has cultivated relationships with some of Manhattan’s most famous chefs, including David Pasternack of Esca and Eric Ripert of Le Bernandin.
Individual buyers, too, sometimes make their way to the New Fulton Fish Market. In the seafood market’s new location, however, browsers are rare. Shoppers must pay a $6.00 parking fee and be prepared for the market’s fast commercial tempo and insiders’ lingo, such as: “I gotta good deal on 8 to 10s.” Translation: I can offer you a competitive price on 8- to 10-pound salmons.
Writers have mourned the closing of the quirky and distinctive old Fulton Fish Market, full of rich historical flavor and detail. But the seafood wholesalers at the New Fulton Fish Market, many owned by the same family for several generations, appreciate the enhanced competitiveness the new, modern facility gives them.
Big Mike Driansky has worked at Caleb Haley & Co., founded in 1859, for 31 years. Driansky’s family has owned the company since 1938. Driansky described the old market as antiquated and expressed great relief that both he and his seafood are no longer exposed to the elements year round.
“It’s the New York Stock Exchange of seafood,” said George Maroulis, the market manager.
The original bustling, open-air market, the largest in the country, grew up around the city’s wharves in the early 1800s. It was famous for many things besides fresh fish: rats, notorious for their size and boldness, scavenged the market’s dirty and bloody ice-strewn floor, which drained slushy water through holes into the East River below. Raw sewage was also a problem. A political attempt to “fix” the market in the 1980s resulted in lawsuits, but not renovation, and eventually, a move to the Bronx was mandated. Overseen by the Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization set up by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the plan took several years to implement.
By the 1990s, the old Fulton Fish Market, although still active, colorful, and boisterous, was technologically outdated and increasingly hemmed in by the city’s growth and development.
New York City built the $85 million state-of-the-art New Fulton Fish Market to retain the region’s valuable wholesale seafood industry. A 1999 seafood industry study estimated that the original Fulton Fish Market contributed about one-third of the New York’s total seafood industry of almost $8 billion. Economic data is not yet available on the new market.
The new market began in November 2005. Open daily to buyers from 1:00 a.m. to 10:00
a.m., it resembles an airplane hangar, feels like a refrigerator (it’s cooled constantly to about 40 degrees F.), and smells as fresh as a modern supermarket. About 40 wholesalers have moved into the New Fulton Fish Market, which is second in size worldwide only to the Tokyo’s Tsukiji wholesale seafood market. Maroulis estimates that the New Fulton Fish Market will handle about one billion pounds of seafood in its first year of operation.
Despite the vastly different characters of the old and new markets, “It’s business as usual up here,” said Johnny Clams, who has been a salesman for Arrow Seafood for 35 years.
Seafood is flown and trucked into the market from all over the world: branzini from the Mediterranean; cockles, barramundi and John Dory from New Zealand and Australia; Brazilian parrotfish; scallops off day boats out of New Bedford; live soft shell crabs from North Carolina; groundfish, whiting and monkfish from Long Island; and swordfish from up and down the East Coast.
Every day in the early morning hours, large retail buyers, chefs, and an occasional retail customer arrive to buy their seafood at the New Fulton Fish Market. The 1999 seafood industry study estimated that the old Fulton Fish Market sold about half of its products to the retail seafood markets and approximately one fifth to restaurants in the New York City metropolitan area, but the current breakdown is not yet known.
This past May, Pat Zollo, owner of Metropolitan Fish Market in Brooklyn, shopped at Arrow Seafood for high quality seafood to satisfy his demanding retail customers – young people he described as yuppies. “They’re getting educated,” Zollo said. “They want to eat wild fish, caught on a line-and-hook.”
Bennie Conte, owner of Conte’s Seafood in Mount Kisco, also searched for the day’s freshest catch for his family’s restaurant. He bought black sea bass, soft-shell crabs and day boat scallops up from New Jersey.
Many chefs frequent Blue Ribbon Fish to handpick the day’s catch. David Samuels, the company’s fourth-generation owner, has cultivated relationships with some of Manhattan’s most famous chefs, including David Pasternack of Esca and Eric Ripert of Le Bernandin.
Individual buyers, too, sometimes make their way to the New Fulton Fish Market. In the seafood market’s new location, however, browsers are rare. Shoppers must pay a $6.00 parking fee and be prepared for the market’s fast commercial tempo and insiders’ lingo, such as: “I gotta good deal on 8 to 10s.” Translation: I can offer you a competitive price on 8- to 10-pound salmons.
Writers have mourned the closing of the quirky and distinctive old Fulton Fish Market, full of rich historical flavor and detail. But the seafood wholesalers at the New Fulton Fish Market, many owned by the same family for several generations, appreciate the enhanced competitiveness the new, modern facility gives them.
Big Mike Driansky has worked at Caleb Haley & Co., founded in 1859, for 31 years. Driansky’s family has owned the company since 1938. Driansky described the old market as antiquated and expressed great relief that both he and his seafood are no longer exposed to the elements year round.