Tony B. on a Japanese seafood market

[justaprogressive]

A Himalayan-sized mountain of discarded styrofoam fish boxes announced my arrival, as
well as a surrounding rabbit warren of shops, breakfast joints and merchants servicing the
market. The market itself was enclosed, stretching seemingly into infinity under a hangar-type
roof, and I will tell you that my life as a chef will never be the same again after spending the
morning – and subsequent mornings – there. Scallops in snow-shoe-sized black shells lay atop
crushed ice, fish, still flopping, twitching and struggling in pans of water, spitting at me as I
walked down the first of many narrow corridors between the vendors’ stands. Things were
different here in that the Japanese market workers had no compunction about looking you in the
eye, even nudging you out of the way. They were busy, space was limited, and moving product
around, in between sellers, buyers, dangerously careening forklifts, gawking tourists and about a
million tons of seafood was tough. The scene was riotous: eels, pinned to boards by a spike
through the head, were filleted alive, workers cut loins of tuna off the bone in two-man teams,
lopping off perfect hunks with truly terrifying-looking swords and saws which, mishandled,
could easily have halved their partners. Periwinkles, cockles, encyclopedic selections of roes –
salted, pickled, cured and fresh – were everywhere, fish still bent from rigor mortis, porgy,
sardines, swordfish, abalone, spiny lobsters, giant lobsters, blowfish, bonito, bluefin, yellowfin.
Tuna was sold like gems – displayed in light-boxes and illuminated from below, little labels
indicating grade and price. Tuna was king. There was fresh, dried, cut, number one, number two,
vendors who specialized in the less lovely bits. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of
gigantic bluefin and bonito, blast-frozen on faraway factory ships. Frost-covered 200-300-
pounders were stacked everywhere, like stone figures on Easter Island, a single slice taken from
near the tail so quality could be examined. They were laid out in rows, built up into heaps,
sawed into redwood-like sections, still frozen, hauled about on forklifts. There were sea urchins,
egg sacs, fish from all over the world. Giant squid as long as an arm and baby squid the size of a
thumbnail shared space with whitebait, smelts, what looked like worms, slugs, snails, crabs,
mussels, shrimp and everything else that grew, swam, skittered, clawed, crawled, snaked or
clung near the ocean floor.

Unlike the low-tide reek of Fulton, Tsukiji smelled hardly at all. What scent it had was not of
fish, but of seawater and the cigarettes of the fishmongers, I had never seen, or even imagined,
many of the creatures I saw.

Hungry, I pushed into a nearby stall, the Japanese version of Rosie’s diner: a place packed
with rubber-booted market workers eating breakfast. The signs were entirely in Japanese, with
no helpful pictures, but a friendly fishmonger took charge. What arrived was, of course,
flawless. Here I was in the Tokyo version of a greasy spoon, surrounded by a mob of toughlooking bastards
in dripping boots and the requisite New York-style rude waitress, and the food was on a par with the best of
my hometown: fresh, clean, beautifully, if simply, presented. Soon,I was wolfing down sushi, miso soup, a tail
section of braised fish in sauce, and an impressive array of pickles.

Beats two eggs over.

From :Kitchen Confidential:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidential

[yorkster]

1. Man, could he write. So missed.