Freshest Fish Traded in the Dead of the NYC Night

Think Wall Street trading is brutal? Head up to the grittiest part of the South Bronx, where cutthroat deals are made in the dead of night on a massive concrete floor that reeks of fish guts.

The New Fulton Fish Market is the nation’s largest seafood market, and second in the world to Tokyo’s. Here, in a refrigerated building the size of six football fields, fishmongers are frenetically filleting, selling and packaging seafood — 200 million pounds a year worth close to $1 billion by some estimates. It is headed for restaurant tables, stores and mouths across America.

Glistening under the fluorescent lights is just about every sea creature. Most come in by truck, but about half are flown in from the ends of the Earth: Arctic char from Iceland; mahi-mahi from Ecuador; hamachi from Japan; branzino from Greece; salmon from Scotland; cockles from New Zealand.

Experienced buyers negotiate prices in seconds, judging quality on a look, a touch, a smell and often a raw taste.

“You know right away if fish is fresh,” says Roberto Nunez, a 44-year-old Peruvian immigrant who has been the buyer for more than a decade for celebrity restaurateurs.

A sign on the market wall agrees: “Good fish ain’t cheap, and cheap fish ain’t good.”

Five nights a week, Nunez shows up at 1 a.m. to purchase as much as $15,000 worth of seafood, enough to meet the demands of 10 restaurants. What’s available on any given night depends on a variety of often unpredictable factors, such as severe weather that keeps fishing fleets in port or a spotty catch in an overfished ocean.

“This is not like ordering tomatoes or potatoes,” Nunez says. “Seafood is wild.”

By 2:30 a.m., one of the key items on his handwritten list of orders — 400 pounds of striped bass — remains unfilled from among dozens of vendors.

“I’m getting nervous,” he says.

The day’s hundreds of offerings are spread out across the floor in ice-lined boxes, a shimmering spectrum of silvers, pinks, reds and browns. Buyers, some vying for the same, scarce items, point to a specific box and cry out, “That’s mine!”

All night, dozens of men in coats and wool caps work to the soundtrack of mini-forklifts whizzing around, honking and spewing exhaust as they move seafood-laden pallets. The smell is a mixture of the fishy and the fresh scent of the ocean.

Nunez finally spots some striped bass. But when he lifts the gills, “it’s no good; they’re brown,” he says dejectedly. (The gills should be bright red). Plus the skin is dry, the eyes are cloudy, and it smells funky.

He spies black sea bass from New Jersey at $6.75 a pound. “How many do you have?”

“One hundred pounds,” says vendor John Dias.

“How about $5.50?” Nunez asks.

Dias relents.

Nunez later nabs red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico. He feels the fish, smells his fingers. It’s fresh. OK, 60 pounds.

At another stall, he pops a raw Nantucket Bay scallop in his mouth, smiling. It’s $20.50 a pound compared to a normal price of, say, $16. But these are extraordinary, and fresh — “like a baby’s bottom” to the touch.

Just before 3 a.m., a vendor whispers in Nunez’s ear: Some striped bass might be on the way — maybe.

He waits around for a while, and sure enough, a box lid opens to reveal eight bass from Delaware, weighing 121 pounds.

At about 5 a.m., bartering slows as the sun peeks over the East River. Blood-stained gloves rest atop the counters. The forklifts are buzzing around, loading 18-wheelers with goods that will be trucked all over the Northeast.

As the city awakens, the exhausted fishmongers trickle out of the facility. They will be back at night to do it all over again.

This article appeared in print on page 4 of the April 9th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.