Mmm… Butterfish
Credit: NOAA Fisheries/Katie Rogers
During the summer growing up in Maine, I used to work at a local fish market on the water in downtown Portland, occupying my time between striper fishing outings and late night shenanigans. After an early morning catching schoolies with bucktails or live-lining mackerel for hogs at nearby jetties, I would take my grandfather's beater hand-me-down Ford F-150 truck down to Commercial Street to start my shift. The market I worked at sold the normal amalgamation of Northeastern fish: haddock, pollock, and cod as well as your average fish market staples like salmon, swordfish and tuna. From time to time, we would receive a shipment of a under represented (read “trash”) fish to try and push on hard working Mainers. Species like Acadian redfish or hake would sell every once and a while, but most of these outcasts would end up becoming chowder mix after a day or two on the ice. However, there was one fish that we would get once or twice a year that even legendary salesman Billy Mays wouldn’t have been able to fling out of the case: Atlantic butterfish.
For those of you unfamiliar with this species, the Atlantic butterfish is a small but tasty fish that has become a popular dish in Japan, but has little to no market here in the United States. Since butterfish are sustainably harvested and are not subject to overfishing, they are a great candidate to purchase if you want to support local fisheries and reduce pressure on more popular species such as haddock. However, a small amount of meat and an even smaller shelf life are turn offs for the average purchaser who just wants to eat some fish tacos. Ergo, when we would get butterfish in, nobody would buy it. And just to be clear - you can’t really buy “a few” butterfish at a time. Think bushels. We tried everything ranging from clever sales pitches all the way to replacing the decorative foliage lining the case with shoals of butterfish, but still no takers. It didn't help that while normal sized whole fish would last 3-4 days on the ice, these pygmies would basically disintegrate after 1 summer day. I even tried to push them on an angry Northern Maine homeowner who came in one day looking for 'buckets of dead fish' to plant in his neighbor's yard, but he ended up taking my secondary advice, which was to swing by the fish processing plant with a 10-gallon bucket and a 6-pack of 'Gansetts as payment. The only person I ever got to buy them, and buy all of them, was this sweet Greek lady we knew.
We had known her as a family friend for years, and we would bring her fresh fish we had caught from time to time. Any time you brought her some of your catch, she would repay you with the most mouthwatering homemade selection of Greek food, and would continue to insist you eat more and more. Just show up unannounced at her house with a tank scrubber brook trout or a side of fresh striped bass, and you would be rewarded with as much fresh spanakopita and baklava as she could force down your gullet. One day, by pure luck, she shuffled into the fish market when we had butterfish displayed and upon seeing the (slightly mushy) carcasses in the case, she excitedly told me how much she loved them and promptly bought all the respectable ones we had left. And man, after that, it was all over. That next year when the useless trough of those silvery bastards arrived at my fish market, I didn't waste any time. I bought them all as soon as they touched the ice and swung by her house that night, knowing I'd get the best dinner of my life.
-Declan
