Goodness gracious. Good thing I don’t like snapper.
[quote=“Sgee, post:41, topic:3592”]
Tuna likely scary $2.00/lb loins…
[/quote] Wait. What does that mean?
Okay. Got it.
Where these guys are potentially sourcing their fish. The “hidden secret” is basically leftovers of what they were not able to sell during the week. http://www.sanpedro.com/gallery_94/San_Pedro_Sat_Morn_Fish_Market.htm.
I visited the Saturday market several years ago, hoping for “Tsukiji” in LA. Instead saw lots of folks carting off large quantities of $2/lb tuna loins, likely destined for AYCE joints. I wonder if they’re ending up at Poke joints too these days.
I’d pop some deworming tablets if you’re a regular at these Poke / AYCE joints.
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Party pooper 
. But just kidding… grateful for the enlightenment. The question did cross my mind about how is it the seafood is less expensive at poke places than sushi places. I thought maybe because it’s easier to prepare and doesn’t take knife cutting expertise.
As far as AYCE, I haven’t been a fan since I was young and broke… or in Vegas 
.
@bulavinaka was right, I was exaggerating, a bit… so maybe my use of the word “literally” was obnoxious and I apologize.
But I must be missing something in your links, because they all seem to indicate exactly what I’m saying. There’s an article about local fish being served in NY and Miami – not LA. There’s an article about a chef buying fish from the local ports in LA – fish that comes predominantly from thousands of miles away, including entirely different oceans. Those vessels coming into that port with fish are not all fishing in our backyard – in fact, most aren’t.
The third article is actually about a local sushi chef, and it says "Sixty to seventy percent of Hiro’s sushi menu is sourced from Japan through a trusted purveyor, but it’s the early morning hours on the corner of 7th and San Pedro where Chef Hiro selects local fish from the Pacific and Atlantic coasts as well as shellfish like oysters which he dresses with dashi and yuzu zest. This morning at 6am there were at least 40 varieties of whole fish on offer including idiot fish, king mackarel, loup de mer, yellow jack from Hawaii and black snapper from New Zealand. A separate area for shellfish housed geoduck, razor clams and oysters.
Maybe it helps that I’m a fisherman and fish geek extraordinaire, but those fish listed aren’t local fish and the “pacific coast” fish mentioned likely include pacific halibut, salmonids, “idiot fish” aka channel cod aka thornyhead, and other species not found or fished commercially in our waters, and possibly yellowfin tuna and various grouper and snapper species again mostly found hundreds of miles to the south. If I used “literally” improperly, they’re definitely using “local” improperly by including even fish from the Atlantic. Maybe I’m crazy, but that’s not local.
There are the very occasional local delicacies you might find at a local sushi bar. Local albacore, when they’re around (it’s been several years), the local bluefin are considered inferior to the bluefin from other locales but are still great (see pic below) and of course the local urchins are considered among the best.
But many of our local reef fish are illegal to commercially fish. Many others can only be caught by net or by spear, and neither method is permitted for commercial fishermen in inshore areas where these fish live. Finally, most of our fish don’t tend to have as nice a flavor as the fish caught elsewhere, for purely natural reasons.
So maybe fudge that 5000 number to about 800, and change “none” to 99%, and I stand by what I said.
I would like to see a sushi bar serving local yellowtail, local bonito, local white sea bass, local halibut (it can be wormy though), even other less glamorous fish like barracuda or opaleye would be interesting to have prepared by a real sushi chef. But that’s not what you get. I’ve never seen most of that stuff on sushi bar menus. I’ve seen Japanese and other foreign analogues of these fish – but not the local stuff. As far as local yellowtail goes, it’s a decent plate of sushi but not even remotely comparable to the farmed hamachi or wild Japanese yellowtail.
By the way – I just have to do it – this is toro from a bluefin I shot in our backyard… warning, NSFW
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Looks delicious.
Would you say L.A. restaurants don’t use local seafood, because it doesn’t taste good? And if it doesn’t taste good is it because of pollution? What do think about seafood from Mexico?
It’s very clunky, hopefully they keep improving it and it has become very difficult to be a discerning responsible eater.
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I don’t think its fair to clump the San Pedro “market”(if you can call it that) as the source of the poke polosion, in fact, I’d say that would be highly highly unlikely. Yes, that place is a dump and there are opportunistic buyers down there but it’s kind of an embarrassment to call it a market. It gives a really bad perception of the Los Angeles seafood industry.
Fair enough on your reasoning but I had to point out the obvious flaw. Like you, much of my life has revolved around seafood. As to those links that other person posted, I wasn’t really sure how that correlated with the argument you were trying to make.
We seem to be merging far from the topic now but maybe a mod or whoever is in charge here can separate them if need be.
And now you’ve managed to steer the topic of local when I was originally going to base my discussion off all commercial species available under that 5000mi mark that are served in our local sushi establishment. It certainly shortens the list if you’re only going to include local and what someones definition of local actually means.
You’ve already mentioned and originally we were talking about species used in sushi restaurant but I’ll include other commercially caught species as well but I’ll limit it to species caught in the state of CA to fit the “local” :
dungeness crab
king salmon(highly seasonal)
squid - lots of squid
sardines
black cod
ca halibut
abalone
albacore - yes not caught as much but a lot of it gets processed in china and sent back but thats another convo alltogether
swordfish - opah bycatch
white sea bass(this time of year)
spot pranws - awesome
rockfish - meh
lingcod
oysters!
anchovies
sandabs
If you want to include the rest of the US fisheries we can really get going.
If you include Baja CA, they’re doing some big things down there. Farmed yellowtail, sea bream and of course the tuna ranching they do there.
And there’s also this… Massive Fish Farm Proposed Off San Diego’s Coast | KPBS Public Media
You made mention of the fish not tasting as good, I don’t believe that’s a solid argument. I think the bottom line is that Japanese trained chefs like to use Japanese products, stuff they are familiar with. Even the Koreans are taught to purchase Japanese fish because that is what they were taught to use and they consider them the best. I think that’s debatable. For instance, New Zealand Alfonisno aka Kinmedai is the same species they get in Japan. If you put them side by side and fillet them out they, you cannot tell them apart and then you do the side by side taste test and they are nearly identical. But if you put 2 fish in front of a sushi chef and tell him one is from Japan and the other one is from NZ, he will take the Japanese almost every time. The only time he won’t is when there isn’t any from Japan available to him.
Hopefully we haven’t moved too far off topic here and if this needs to be moved please do so.
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I’d encourage wholesalers like yourself to make restaurant quality seafood more accessible to regular retail consumers.The state of seafood for the regular Joe in LA is generally quite dismal…
Wow that is local
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Easier said than done. Our location unfortunately doesn’t allow for retail business due to city regulations. Not to mention, it would severely compromise our relationships with other major wholesalers/distributors in the area. It’s not as though we haven’t thought about it though.
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Look what’s moving into the former Olio Pizzeria spot on 3rd & Crescent Heights. It’s just down the street from Mainland Poke. I’m sure they’re thrilled.
Maybe I’m wrong and Poke is sweeping the nation.
The Gelson’s next to me just switched out the fresh-fruit bar to make space for a poke bar. $15.99/lb, but it looks better than the SaMo Bristol Farms poke bar.
When the Encino Gelson’s is getting in on the action, you know it’s (long been) a thing. 
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Hilarious. Like Starbucks.
If you catch them all, surely you’ll find Poke.
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Where do you find this stuff?
I wonder what happened to that pizza oven…