QUALITY SEAFOOD IN REDONDO BEACH

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from a gentleman in Los Angeles who had read and enjoyed my book (who said "there had to be one"?). It has been one of the greatest pleasures of the last year or so, that people have not only shelled out their hard earned cash to read my freshman ramblings, but have also then taken time to contact me via Dos Hermanos.

In this instance, the e-mail came from my new chum, Robert Gurfield, who was kind enough to invite Sybil and I to join him for lunch. He suggested we meet with him at Quality Seafood Inc. at Redondo Beach and, after a slightly tortuous drive we arrived to find him waiting outside clutching a copy of Eat My Globe.

Quality Seafood has been around since the mid-1950’s but, the owning family have been selling fish for much longer. Its location in King Harbour is close to Redondo Beach Pier and contains a number of long counters where you can buy an astonishing variety of live seafood or fresh fish. In one part of the market, were nearly twenty types of oysters and clams sitting in water tanks alongside four or five varieties of fresh crabs. In another part there was an impressive display of fish, ready to be filleted and in one more area, there were pre-cooked slabs of fish and spindly spider crab legs ready for the eating.

As well as selling the fish for cooking at home, Quality Seafood Inc. also offers you the chance to sample some of their achingly fresh stock right there and then. It’s a simple operation. You point to the variety of crabs, clams, oysters that you would like to try and they charge you for them by the lb. The crabs are tossed into a plastic bag and straight into a steamer. The clams are given a quick dousing of wine and then cooked in the same way. While that is happening, you find a space at one of the concrete tables in front of the market, cover it with newspaper and then order drinks at a small concession. You can also “rent” a wooden crab mallet for $3, the assumption being that most people will keep them as a souvenir.

By the time we were all set up, the clams arrived. We had chosen two types, “savoury” and “Littleneck” and they had opened in the steam to add their own juices to the cooking liquid. Both were meaty and delicious, but the Littleneck’s came out on top needing just a few drops of juice from the lemons Robert had collected with our drinks.

Sybil held back as Robert and I tucked in. “I am all about the crab” she informed us and once Robert returned with the steaming bag containing three prime specimens of the local variety, we knew she was not kidding. I mentioned recently, after a visit to Boiling Crab, that I find the reward:effort ratio for crabs an unbalanced one and rarely order them. However, in the company of two people who had obviously devoured hundreds in their lifetimes, I saw how it should be done.

As I hammered at claws to little effect, Sybil and Robert began to methodically reduce their crabs to nothing more than a few remaining splinters of shell, removing every last fragment of meat from any place where it might be lurking. I did my best to keep up and began to see the light when Robert inculcated me into the wonders of drinking the liquid contained in the shell. “Add a few drops of lemon juice” he told me and “it’s just like Bouillabaisse” He was not wrong and a few seconds later, I was slurping the last drops from its crabby bowl.

While we had been ordering our seafood, Sybil had spotted some of the spiny wonders that are Sea Urchin bobbing up and down in a small tank. Over the years, I have developed a rather expensive habit of eating portion after portion of this delicacy at every decent sushi restaurant I visit. I have to admit, however, that I had yet to sample one direct from the shell. So, I watched with intrigue as the fishmonger began to slice the top off one of the urchin and then offered it to us to scoop out the orange insides with a plastic spoon. Even if the rest of the meal had not been so memorable, it would have been worth it just for that experience.

As I have found to be the case so many times in the last three years, people who love food also tend to be good people and despite our protestations, Robert insisted on picking up the tab as “a wedding gift”. It was an unnecessary, but hugely appreciated act of generosity and we accepted only after extracting a promise that we could reciprocate soon.

After a brief walk around the harbour, Robert left us and we headed back towards Quality Seafood Inc. to buy some fish to take home with us. En route, we passed another small Korean restaurant called The Pacific Seafood Company. In front of the open kitchen were dozens of huge, meaty looking shrimps wriggling around in glass tanks.

Sybil looked at me and I looked at Sybil. We didn’t need to speak and, without a word between us, we ducked inside and I was soon handing over $40 for 1lb of live shrimps. They asked us how we would like them prepared and, although we were tempted to go sashimi style, we again chose to have them steamed. When they arrived, we did not regret our choice. Our money had brought us into close contact with eight beauties, from which we ripped the shells, sucked out the juices from the heads and tails before revealing the plump pink bodies.

As we sucked and chewed, I mumbled at Sybil “this is the sort of food that makes me really, really happy”. She just nodded.

I see a lot more seafood in our future.

Oh, the last picture is to prove that although I am now 46 and about to get married, I am still an immature child and laugh whenever I see the word "ass"

THE BOILING CRAB: BOIL IN THE BAG IN ALHAMBRA

As I worked on EATING FOR BRITAIN, the impact of trade and immigration on the cuisine of our nation became more and more apparent. Without Phoenician traders Cornwall would not have clotted cream or saffron. Without Portuguese Jews and Belgian Huguenots being tossed from their respective lands we would have no fish and chips, and without the British Empire, we would have nowhere to go to after half a dozen pints on a Friday night.

America too has its own legacy and in the late 1970’s the US extended their hospitality to over 800,000 Vietnamese Boat People. Many of these refugees were settled in the Southern states where, over the last thirty years, they have begun to assimilate with the local communities with some interesting culinary consequences.

There is a point to all of this, in case you were wondering, and that point is The Boiling Crab, where Sybil and I along with our friend Amanda had lunch on Sunday. The Boiling Crab is a small chain of eight restaurants, which originated in Seadrift, Texas and now also has four locations in California.

The owners are originally from Vietnam (ah, there’s the link) and have combined their own traditional take on seafood with the “crab boils” which are so popular throughout the coastal towns of the South. In the short time they have been open, the restaurants have become incredibly popular and, with their no reservation policy, tales of the waiting time to get a table, are legion on local food blogs.

We headed East to Alhambra, an area that like its neighbours, Arcadia and Monterey Park is home to large communities from across South East Asia and consequently to some of the best restaurants representing their cuisines in the city. We arrived early enough to be first in line, but soon found ourselves heading up a queue of little short of a hundred people.

It wasn’t the orderly sort of line we are used to back in Britain, and I have to admit to being a little uncomfortable as people milled around not following the norms of good queuing that have been inculcated into Brits over generations. However, it all seemed to work in its own chaotic way and, after taking our names a short while before opening, we were the first to be shown to a table as soon as the doors were pushed back.

The Boiling Crab is no fine dining establishment. The tables are covered with paper, rolls of Costco’s finest kitchen towel are the only adornment and, as soon as I took a seat, a waiter arrived with a plastic bib for each of us. The menu too is short and, Amanda being Amanda and Sybil Being Sybil, they already knew what we were going to order by the time I returned from a visit to the bathroom.

The restaurant, as its name suggests is all about seafood and ordering is simple. You choose your variety (from Shrimps, Crayfish, Lobster, Blue Crabs etc etc), which are boiled in a bag along with a range of sauces and at different levels of spiciness. We ordered ours in a medium hot sauce and also added a couple of side dishes and a portion of catfish. We then sat back to sip on our drinks as we waited for our food and watched the floorshow as the rest of the small restaurant began to fill up.

The first part of our order arrived about ten minutes later. A plastic bag filled with a lurid orange sauce was opened to release a waft of savoury, spicy seafood steam. The sauce was coating 1lb of shrimps and we immediately fell on them sucking the heads to remove all the fat. Sybil and Amanda peeled their shrimp carefully, I on the other hand ate them shell and all. It is something I have always done and so do most of my family. I think it is a texture thing.

By the time we had finished half the shrimp leaving a mound of shells and heads on the table, our next orders arrived. The catfish was freshly fried in a breading crust and piping hot as it nestled on top of some spiced up fries (there is a theme here) and we tossed chunks between our hands until they were cool enough for us to break apart releasing the white flakes of fish underneath. We dipped them in the bag mopping up the remaining sauce from the shrimps.

Then came the next bag, this time containing two blue crabs. I was less taken with these and not just because I have barely been able to look at a crab since I spent seven hours projectile vomiting on a crab boat off the coast of Cromer last year. The truth is that crabs are often found wanting when it comes to the “effort:reward” ratio. These were no different and, while Sybil and Amanda seemed to enjoy the effort of smashing the claws to release tiny, sweet shreds of flesh, it all seemed like too much of a faff for me and I picked at a pile of sweet potato fries while finishing off the last few remaining shrimps.

Regular readers of the blog will know that there does not appear to be a word for “ample” in Tagalog or, if there is, Sybil has never bothered to learn it. So, no sooner was she wiping her mouth clean of crab juices, she and Amanda were waving over the waiter to place orders for more seafood, in this case an extra pound of shrimps and pound of the most expensive items on the menu, King Crab Legs.

Like the Blue Crab, the $17.99 a lb limbs of the King variety left me cold. However, as the pictures show, they were greeted with considerable glee by Amanda who was happy to leave the new bag of spicy shrimp to me to polish off and then use as a dip for the remaining fries.

Less than an hour after we arrived, we had laid waste to over four lbs of seafood and the waiter came to clear our table with an approving nod and a shout of “Good Job”. Bear in mind however that while our efforts were laudable, he also informed us that single diners have been known to polish off 5lbs of shrimp or crayfish in one sitting. No doubt this induces some form of seafood coma similar to the one we felt as we waddled out to the parking lot.

The line seemed to have doubled while we were in there and I can certainly understand why. The Boiling Crab serves up tasty food and a fun experience for a ludicrously cheap price. Our whole meal was less than $30 a head including drinks and tip, representing excellent value for some wonderfully messy silliness.

I am not normally a fan of fusion cuisine, but after one visit to The Boiling Crab, Vietnamese Cajun is marked down as one of the more unlikely successes.

Who knew?