When I moved from L.A. to the Pacific Northwest, one of my thoughts was ‘Oh, boy! O, boy! Fresh fish!’ After all, Seattle is know for the Pike Place Fish Market, and the northern Pacific Ocean is where salmon live, right? Imagine my dismay, upon moving to my little seaside holiday community, that all the fish in restaurants was brown – breaded-and-fried. It’s gotten better, but…
Where’s the variety? In the '80s and '90s, in Southern California, there were lots of choices. You could go to the supermarket and buy Patagonian toothfish (Chilean sea bass), slimehead (orange roughy), shark filets, fresh swordfish and other fish I don’t remember. Today, up here, I never see those. Every supermarket has two or three varieties of salmon, true cod, rock cod, tilapia, and halibut. You can usually get frozen-swordfish-inna-bag or frozen-sole-inna-bag. Since our office moved out of Belltown, I can no longer walk to Pike Place Market on my lunch break. I’m limited to supermarkets. And I find the selection of fresh fish to be too limited. (Costco has whole trout, which is nice, and whole tilapia; but I can’t use quantities that large.)
Costco had fresh barramundi filets a few weeks ago, and those were great in fish Florentine. Alas, no more. Trader Joe’s has frozen-haddock-inna-bag, and I love haddock when I make fish & chips. But sometimes I want something other than the same old salmon/cod/tilapia/halibut.
I picked up some frozen-branzino-inna-bag from Trader Joe’s. I’ve never had it before. I don’t prefer frozen-inna-bag fish, but at least it’s something different.
You’re barking up the wrong trees here. You want variety in fish, go to an Asian supermarket. There you will find a bewildering variety, many of them so fresh they’re swimming in tanks, ready for you to order their death. I live in Portland, and the SF Supermarket on SE 82nd and Foster has about a hunnert feet of fresh fish to peruse along with even more in the frozen section. Fish galore, yo.
Very much so. I’m super lucky to have four really good ones ‘in range.’
An enormous Suprt H-Mart (Korean), an Assi Plaza (Korean), Mitsuwa (Japanese) & a large Seafood City (Filipino).
Unfortunately, there are no Asian supermarkets near us. Bellingham has two convenience store-sized Asian markets (one touts East Asian), and one ‘grocery store’-sized Asian market. (‘Grocery store’-sized is much smaller than a supermarket, but larger than a convenience store.) I didn’t see pictures posted of fish at any of them. Too bad the border’s closed. Vancouver, BC is only 10 miles farther from our house than Bellingham is.
Currently, Harbor Island. Summer (maybe), Burien. I know Uwajamaya is around in Seattle, but I’ve never heard of the other one. I avoid driving in Seattle as much as possible. Too many cars, too many one-way streets, no- or expensive parking.
There’s the Asian Grocery Store at N 130th & Aurora, about 5 minutes W of I-5 which wouldn’t take you much out of your way (take 130th St exit) (and a big parking lot).
Most of those are in areas he indicated he didn’t want to attempt. But you’re right, surely there’s something that meets his qualifications of parking and non-one-way streets, and are on his route.
Yeah, I’m partial to Costco’s black cod, but it’s enough for 6 meals for me. It seems to freeze pretty well, but I’d rather not buy fresh fish just to freeze it.
You mentioned Seattle*, so I started to list great places… then you said Bellingham. You’re in small town America, almost a transplanted midwest town.
*So plan a drive down to Seattle and stock up, then splurge on a nice seafood dinner at someplace like Salty’s in West Seattle, which means you look out on the skyline at sunset… ahhh…
I centered the map on Harbor Island and went from there. Looking again, I see there’s a Seafood City in Tukwila. OP has loads of awesome fish available. It appears to be a situation of ‘won’t’ vs ‘can’t.’
Well, I could fly to southern Italy for fresh sardines but it’s too much of a hassle. It’s a 230 mile round trip to the office, and the last thing I want to do is spend an hour driving a couple/few miles to find a fishmonger. But that’s not the point.
The point is that aside from specialty fish markets nobody seems to have a real variety of fish up here.
There’s the same list of the usual suspects here, too, in fact, everywhere. We did have a fancy fish store which closed before I found out about it and could drive there. I think the ‘problem’ is - there either are no more fish or it’s not financially worth it to stock and sell them. There are a few in Asian markets but the great majority of fish, IMO, are scarce and would be very expensive to sell in a grocery store. I did buy a sliver of halibut, $7 for a literal sliver, it was $27 a pound…Why would Walmart or Costco stock and sell fresh orange roughy and swordfish, when their clientele scarfs down fish sticks and to be very daring, a slice of salmon or tilapia filet? … Years ago I had a James Beard fish cookbook, listing hundreds of fish and hundreds of ways to cook them. Today, most of those fish are extinct or just about extinct.
Most “fresh” fish you buy at the grocery store is shipped in frozen and thawed in the back to be sold. Given how perishable fresh seafood is, this means only the fast movers are going to be on offer. But it also means, if you don’t like the selection at your local store, buying frozen online is an equally good alternative.
I heard a story on NPR last year, where some university or another studied whether people preferred fresh (never frozen) fish to fish that was frozen soon after it was caught. The results showed that most people preferred the frozen fish. I don’t have a problem with frozen fish. I don’t even mind farmed fish if I can’t get wild-caught. The ‘inna-bag’ comment was about the frozen fish supermarkets sell, which tend to be in bags where you can’t see the fish or determine the size and shape. (Trader Joe’s uses vacuum-sealed plastic, so you can see the fish.)
I was thinking about that this morning. I wonder what the duty is on fish?
