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Welcome to The Breadwinner, in which Manny Howard--a lifelong Brooklynite following his wife's high-powered job to Los Angeles--attempts to feed his family, whether they like it or not.
A few weeks after I moved to California, I met McCord over breakfast at the fabled Redondo diner Eat At Joe's. His motorcycle helmet rattled hard on the common table we were apparently about to share. Black and thoroughly scratched, the helmet was fitted with a DIY mohawk of pastel-died feathers.
I tried not to look up from my book, The Bottom of the Harbor. "You enjoying that?" he asked after inhaling his first cup of coffee.
I nodded, noncommittal.
He sported an Airborne pin on the breast of his leather motorcycle vest, and his wispy gray and white hair and beard held traces of its original walnut. His eyes were bloodshot and set deep, giving the impression of being under-inflated. Still, they twinkled when he said, "Nobody reads books in Los Angeles; not in public. Where are you from?"
Brooklyn, I replied. He nodded sympathetically. Him too, a lifetime before. I ordered scrambled eggs with sausage, biscuits, and gravy, and we whiled away the breakfast hour, over-sharing our hopes and fears while the waitress lost all hope of ever getting the table back. When we finally quit the diner, in the early lunch rush, our parting hug and enthusiastic back-patting was a testament to our intention to convene again soon. Things were looking up. Not in Los Angeles a month and I had made my first friend. McCord roared off down the hill toward the boat he lived on in the Redondo marina.
I haven't seen him since.
Four months after our chance encounter, I got a lead on a fishmonger, Quality Seafood, in Redondo--something of an institution on the waterfront. The most interesting thing about the outfit as far as I was concerned was its location in the marina: my best opportunity yet to catch up with McCord.
The Redondo Pier is a tourist trap in the tradition of Coney Island. And if Nathan's Famous sold fresh whole fish and offered a respectable variety of oysters as well as hotdogs and clams, it could be Quality Seafood. (Both venues do sell enormous cups of beer.) In addition to live crabs--Dungeness, blue, spider, and Santa Barbara Rock crab--and even East Coast lobsters, Quality Seafood sells live sea urchin. But at the 30-foot-long fish counter, whole fish is the thing, and the counter man will cook whatever you choose on the spot (fried or grilled) for free. (There's no shortage of these hybrid market-restaurants here, but Quality surpasses its peers.) Best of all, the first day I visited, there was pompano resting on the ice.
Pompano belongs to the jack family, with meat that hints at mackerel with nowhere near the oiliness. It holds up well on the grill, and doesn't need more than a spritz of lemon on the plate. It's rare you find one that's too big for two people to share. I buy them whenever I find them. That day I asked for a pair, at $9.99 per poud.Pleased with my score, I walked the quays in search of McCord, paying special attention to the most dilapidated craft. I had plenty to chose from. Many appeared abandoned, splattered with pelican guano and littered with crab legs and unidentifiable shells.
McCord was nowhere to be found, of course. But just as I was turning from the waterfront there was a boil in the water. A bait ball--a dense sphere of tiny fish protecting themselves from predators--broke the surface, followed by the brown head and shoulders of a sea lion. She was playing with her food, snapping at the outliers while pushing the heart of the school up against the concrete wall of the wharf. She harvested what she could before they scattered, then rocketed back to the mouth of the harbor before lunch could escape. The bait fish cooperated for a few more cycles, and then the ball disintegrated in a hysterical flash of silver. The huntress coursed aimlessly, slaloming the outboards hanging from the sterns of this ragtag fleet, then slipped away and out of sight.
I've been slow on the uptake here on The Beach. Good groceries, like fast friends, are hard to find. But not once while shopping in Brooklyn did I ever watch a sea lion run herd on a school of anchovies. Over dinner--those pompano, grilled crisp--I told Lisa and the kids they needed to see this place.
"Like Coney Island, dad?" Heath, the 10-year-old, asked skeptically, separating the fibers of her pompano fillet until they resemble human hair. "Without the rides. Same vibe, though."
"Does it have an aquarium?" Bevan Jake, 9, asked hopefully.
"Even better."
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
2 1- or 2-pound whole pompano, head on
Kosher salt
Black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil plus more for oiling and drizzling
Juice of 1 lemon
PREPARATION
When grill is hot, clean and oil grate well--this will make it easier to flip the fish. If fish is large, score horizontal lines in thickest muscle. Season fish inside and out. Place fish on grill and cook over indirect medium heat, resisting any urge to adjust it. Cook until skin is crisp and lightly charred, and flesh is flaky and opaque to the bone, 6 to 10 minutes, depending on size. Using two hands and two metal spatulas, run tools underneath fish, then lift and gently roll over. Grill until flesh is flaky and opaque down to the bone, 6 to 10 minutes. Using a small knife check temperature of the meat. Fish is done if the knife slides easily through the thickest part of flesh.
To serve, fillet fish, then drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice.
Note: This recipe has not been tested by the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen.
Manny Howard is the James Beard Award-winning author of My Empire of Dirt, about turning his Brooklyn backyard into a farm. His work appears in numerous magazines, and in the essay collections "Man With A Pan" and "The Bastard on the Couch."
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