“That’s not cod, man. That’s steelhead trout,” Harrison “Harry” Kalish, 23, explains as he stops his coworker from placing an expertly cut filet onto the wrong tray. At Greenpoint Lobster & Fish Co. in Long Island City, New York, rows of whole fish with marble-sized, glossy eyes and slightly drooping lips gleam under the bright fluorescent lights. It’s 1:15 p.m. on Thursday as Kalish, the manager since January, gives the shop one last look before escaping the fish market for a rare lunch break.
“The biggest issue right now is we don’t have enough people,” says Kalish. “I’m working overtime and that’s costing us a lot of money.”
Most days Kalish is confined to the shop for lunch, getting only a few spare moments to grab a bite before the bustle of work begins again. “I take like a five to 10-minute lunch break and then it’s probably interrupted by a customer,” he says. “I have to get delivery or something. Sometimes there’s a Mexican food truck or I just run across the street to get stuff.” Before walking out of the shop, he glances around.
“Space these out a little more,” Kalish tells an employee, gesturing towards the shimmery fish behind the plexiglass display case.
Dressed in a worn Ohio State University sweater, dark wash jeans, a pair of dusty white sneakers and a Greenpoint Lobster & Fish Co. baseball cap, he doesn’t seem the least perturbed by the chilly air that afternoon. Born in the Brookline suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, Kalish lived in the Northeast before moving Brooklyn in January .“I’m glad to get out because I never get out of there,” Kalish says tilting his head towards Greenpoint, a lopsided grin on his face. He decides he’s in the mood for Thai food and his long legs carry him the one block to Tuk Tuk on Vernon Boulevard.
“I feel very fortunate and lucky to have gotten where I am cause it was just kind of spur of the moment,” Kalish says, as he settles in at a small table near the corner and scans the colorful menu. “I was like, ‘oh, let me check out fish jobs,’ and then, boom. It worked out.” He graduated from Kenyon College in May 2018 with a degree in American studies, but it was when he took a job as a production assistant in New York that he stumbled into his true passion.
“I was cooking for the whole cast and crew,” says Kalish, who started cooking in high school, “and then I was like, ‘Oh I actually like the cooking part’, but everything else kind of sucks.” He stops briefly to place his order: vegetable and tofu pad Thai with a side of spring rolls. He then went to Boston where he did a film internship. “Hated it, hated it, hated it. Simultaneously I was working at a fish market and I was like, ‘Okay, this is something I like’.”
He cultivated his skills while studying abroad in Copenhagen, and during the five months he worked at New Deal Fish Market in Boston. “It’s a lot of observation,” Kalish says. “I would literally just stand there at my last job and just watch people who are really good at cutting fish. Then they would let me do it on fish they were about to throw out.”
The waiter interrupts briefly to deliver a small bowl of salad and Kalish flashes a gracious smile. “I haven’t cooked all of these fish, I haven’t tried all of them, but I’ve read about what the flavor profile is. So many times, people are like, oh, and how long should I prepare it for? Like eight minutes at 350°? I feel like I’m always telling people to just do a quick sear,” Kalish says with a laugh. Fish from Greenpoint Lobster & Fish Co. are locally sourced, and Kalish emphasizes that sustainably-raised seafood is part of the company’s ethos. He begins to explain why he usually only eats seafood from Greenpoint when his pad Thai arrives. The steam rises in little puffs as he talks in between bites.
His problem, he says, is that the fish at work is of such high quality it spoils him for fish anywhere else. He can’t imagine anything better, so he simply chooses non-fish items from the menu.
His passion becomes almost palpable the longer he talks about seafood. “I can talk about fish literally all day!” he says. “I feel like so many people in the industry, all the fishmongers I’ve met, could literally talk forever about fish. I mean it’s a heavily male-dominated community and I guess they just want to ‘mansplain’ it or something. But you develop this passion because you touching fish all day.”
In ffive years he hopes to be the owner of a restaurant with a friend. “We discussed it a lot,” he says. “I’m looking at this as a great entryway into that. I know opening a restaurant is so hard, so I’m really content with what I’m doing right now. I’m saving up money for eventually to do that.”
