‘IT’S A UNION JOB AND THOSE ARE THE BEST’
and finned jacks and trigger fish, raw and rosy scallops and bushels piled high with rippling lobsters and soft-shell crabs.
Endless rows of ice-nestled fish showcase the market’s tremendous variety — richness few Americans ever get the chance to see, much less to eat.
Even in the market’s hometown, most of the fish sold in local stores has been caught in Southeast Asia, where environmental regulations are loose and enforcement even looser. It’s frozen and flown here, and most of us are none the wiser.
But now, for about what most people would pay for fish at Whole Foods, buyers can tap into the Fulton Fish Market by going online.
“You can place an order up to 1 a.m. on say, a Tuesday, and we’ll have it to you that day, sometimes within four or five hours,” said Spindler (below).
To meet demand, Spindler and his employees work with split-second precision — mostly from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., with the crunch time coming between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., when all orders must be completed to make airplane connections out of JFK and LaGuardia.
As online orders come in, Anthony Dattolico, a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef who now works with Spindler, goes shopping.
Competing among the first wave of buyers who flood the market around 1 a.m. for the very high-end stuff, Dattolico hunts for the best-tasting products to meet his customers’ high standards. He’s backed by David Bracher, whose technical title at fultonfishmarket.com is production manager/pricing. But his family history — 40 years with his dad’s Merrick Seafood on Long Island — makes him uniquely qualified to spot a bad fish, a skill every good buyer must learn. Every night, Dattolico, Bracher and a third member of the dot-com team, Robert DiGregorio, aka Bobby Tuna — a chess master whose other skill is detecting the fresh-seafood imposters — wade onto the floor and greet the fishmongers by name.
Most of them are family businesses on their third or fourth — and sometimes fifth — generation. The genuine bonhomie, however, doesn’t get in the way of business.
As many as six or seven salesmen per company — each with a fish hook slung casually over a shoulder — stand around the makeshift storefronts to deal with buyers.
Some of the muscle is also there to guard the icy merchandise. One misplaced box of premium product can mean a $2,000 loss — and a surprising number of fish can sprout legs and disappear when backs are turned.
The actual sales are hard to see to the untrained eye — a casual approach, a quick nod of the head or a shrug of dismissal. A scribbled chit or sometimes just a handshake means the deed is done. Each buyer has a bay number and a vehicle number, and by the time they’ve made their rounds, all their orders have been packed and delivered to their waiting truck.
Some companies are known for specific products, like Salvatore (Calamari Kid) Ruggiero at Joe Monani Fish Co.
“I got squid ink in my veins,” Ruggiero bragged. Aside from squid, Monani is famous for its fresh lobster tails, harvested by three divers they hired and trained in the Bahamas.
David Samuels at Blue Ribbon is known as one of the most consistently high-quality sellers around — in part because of a