The Fulton Fish Market is the Ellis Island of seafood. It's not your small, local fish market, with the requisite white fish, peel-'n'-cook shrimp, salmon fillets, and tuna steaks. More than 150 million pounds of seafood pass through the market every year. It's where the best restaurants and the local stores and everyone else get their fish. First established in 1822 (and located on the edge of the East River since 1869), the Fulton market quickly became the largest wholesale fish market in the country, with schooners and sloops unloading fish onto its docks every day of the year. With the advent of modern methods of refrigeration, the fish sold at the market was increasingly trucked rather than boated in; ironically, by the 1970s, seafood no longer arrived at the market via water. Today, everything available at the market is driven in. Some say because of that fact the market is becoming obsolete and should be relocated to a more modern facility that is better suited to land transportation. But when I visited, I found a thriving hive of activity, and not a hint of decline in sight.

Even though the market is located in downtown Manhattan, just north of the tourist-ridden South Street Seaport, don't try finding it during daylight hours. You'll just be left with the lingering smell of fish in your nostrils. The market is alive only between midnight and 5 a.m. The rest of the time it looks like a warehouse with its metal gates rolled down and locked. My trip there, late at night, felt like a dream.

Many of the men (there were, as far as I could tell, no women working at the market) who worked there looked as if they would just as soon fight as look you in the eye. Evidently, most of their rough attitude is due to the nature of the job, not the men. "It's a fast-paced, heavy labor job," explained Gary Auslander, an employee of Michael's Seafood, a wholesale company that supplies many of Manhattan's restaurants. I met with Auslander several days after my visit, hoping to get the perspective of someone who deals with the market on a daily basis. "The market is only open for a few hours, before the sun comes up, and that means getting the work done. Not much time for talk." Auslander laughed off any fear of the market workers, with their hooks and bloody aprons. "You're not afraid of the neighborhood butcher. These are just guys working a job. They've got families and lives. Just like everybody." In order to stay out of the way of all the speeding forklifts, Auslander suggested that anyone coming to explore the market "hang back in one of the old bars, like the Paris Café. You've got a good view of the buyers and the action, but you're not in the way. Plus, a couple of beers and you're not so scared."

By the time I left the market it was close to dawn. After watching buyers bargain with sellers and fish being packed in ice and hauled off to restaurants all over New York, I took Auslander's advice and sat in the Paris Café, watching the forklifts whiz by while I sipped a pint of beer. I had thought I would be repulsed by all the blood and death at the market. But as I wandered through it, I found the initial shock of coming face to face with the animals wore off, and curiosity took over. I looked down at a bin full of fluke and knew I had to try that odd-looking flat-as-a-pancake fish. The same went for a bucket of eels. I made notes to myself about what I wanted to try cooking at home. Finally, knowing that I had braved what I consider one of New York's hidden landmarks, I started looking for a taxi to take me home.

— Ian McCulloch

Photos by Matt Nighswander

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