An untold story from Sydney's Fish Market

An untold story from Sydney’s Fish Market and the Sydney’s Fish Market Restaurants in Pyrmont

Connect with us in an untold story just a few blocks from one of our favourite nautical bars, the Peg Leg Pyrmont.

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Alex from the Sydney Fish Market, a local fisher himself, shares a few secrets beneath the glisten and gleam of the Sydney Fish Market Restaurants.

Join us in our latest Sydney podcast on a stroll through the Sydney Fish Market. We join Alex one of the fish market tour guides whom we meet excitedly admiring a fish as the sun rises across Blackwattle Bay.

Alex, who has been recently featured in Time out explains The Sydney Fish Market is open every day, except Christmas day.

The Sydney Fish Market is also one of the most diverse markets on the globe and could be just second after Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market famous for its astounding display of seafood and the pre-dawn tuna auctions

A touch on the Dutch Auction system

In the first part one of our podcast interview with Alex, he explains how now the selling and buying of fish runs of a Dutch Auction. Also that technically for auction fans it’s an open descending price auction. Auction prices even start at the three-to Five dollar price range above the data price per kilo.

Buyers come from across the Asia-Pacific region who sometimes have less than a few seconds to make a decision. The auction floor can have over 100-plus varieties of shellfish and fish on any given day.

Cullen made his way carefully onto the auction floor with his guide carefully steering him through the hundreds of new crates of fish and seafood among the ice and the excited sounds of constant clicks made during the bidding on the keypads of all of the bidders.

Chilled somewhat by the early morning thaw after Cullen’s extensive tour we join Alex again where he shares his love of fishing and some of his “pretty much foolproof tips on cooking fish”.

A standing roast recipe for a fabulous fish dish

He then shares his perfect standing roast recipe for a fabulous fish dish, so the fins go crispy a great secret straight from the marketplace.

His gives us great tips on what to try to around this time of the year and shares with us a cheeky story about the best part of any fish.

Alex also advises Cullen to dig deep and to trust our instincts when choosing fish and seafood by “getting something that appeals to you”.

And he shares his most valuable insight into the best lunch at the fish market as one of the ultimate foodie meals in Sydney and perhaps fact across the country.

SFM is the largest market of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere Sydney’s fish market restaurants features a range of restaurants and cafés, a bakery, butcher, gourmet deli, greengrocer, bottle shop, fishing supplies store and gift shop.

Retail stores at Sydney Fish Market include :

BLACKWATTLE DELI GREGORY’S BREAD FISHERMAN’S FINE WINES FISH MARKET CAFE CHRISTIE’S SEAFOODS WATERSIDE FRUIT CONNECTION FISHERMAN’S WHARF SEAFOOD RESTAURANT NICHOLAS SEAFOODS SUSHI BAR PETER’S FISH MARKET DOYLE’S AT THE FISH MARKET DE COSTI SEAFOODS SALTY SQUID SEA EMPEROR SEAFOOD RESTAURANT & OYSTER BAR VIC’S MEAT MARKET MUSUMECI SEAFOOD CLAUDIO’S QUALITY SEAFOODS KIOSK ICECREAM & COFFEE

Find out more about Sydney’s fish market restaurants Boutique Brunch Tour behind the Scenes at the Market

Hi, it’s Cullen here from the EATT Magazine Podcast, and I’m very lucky to be joined by Alex

Cullen

Thank you. You’re the tour guide here at the Sydney Fish Market, and I wanted to ask you a few questions. As I was really lucky enough to be able to come in and have a look at the, I guess I would call it the auction floor, the floor where people bid for fish, and that happens every day of the week, is that right?

Alex

Every weekday. So not on weekends, just Monday through to Friday. (referring to the behind the scene tours)

Cullen

Okay, brilliant. And when we were looking at that, there’s three; I guess what I would call huge clocks when I’m not quite sure if they were clocks or not?

Cullen

They had timers on them, and they had lots of numbers whizzing around, and there were a lot of people sitting down beneath them looking at the boards very carefully to see what was happening there.

Alex

So that’s our Dutch or reverse auction system.

Cullen

Okay. So, I think I know something about the Dutch option, but I’m sure some of our listeners might not be 100% clear about that. How would you describe it?

Alex

Technically for auction fans, it’s an open descending price auction. So it was the system designed by the Dutch for their Tulip craze. And it was the system designed from the very beginning to sell perishable goods as quickly as possible.

Cullen

Okay. How does it work?

Alex

We’ve got historical sales data that goes back a decade, and that tells us in that week of the year for the last ten years, this certain species in that size and condition and we are quite specific, is worth x dollars per kilo. So if it should sell for $10 a kilo, yeah, we’ll start that particular box. Three to $5 per kilo above its expected sales price.

Cullen

So if we were talking about a fish like Barramundi for example and so let’s say that might come in at $10 a kilo. How, how would that work then?

Cullen

You’d go back over all that data over the last ten years and say this week, the 14th-weekend March or the 14th week of the year, it was worth $12 or would you take all of that down, and then you work out on an average, I guess?

Alex

Yeah, it gives us an average in a predicted, and then we started, I mean, 30% or 20% above what it should sell for sure.

Cullen

So let’s say you might go higher and say, put it out at $14 a kilo. How does the bidding work and how does the pricing work?

Alex

Okay, so we started at $14 a kilo. The auction begins, and it starts counting down every revolution of that stock clock. It takes $1 per kilo off the sales price and the first buyer, the guys you could see in the stands, the first buyer to stop the auction with a press of a button has committed to buying at least one box at the price they stopped the auction house.

Cullen

Okay, so let’s say the prices spiralling down, is that right?

Cullen

It goes down and let’s say somebody says, ‘okay’, I’m buying it at $12, and then I guess it’s competitive in the sense that people say, oh well look like you know, I better get a name because I didn’t know how many boxes there.

Cullen

Is that how it works?

Alex

You don’t know what your competitor is prepared to pay. That keeps the prices high. That’s a very important aspect of this doctrine otherwise if the price plummets, that seafood will go elsewhere next week.

Alex

So we don’t know what their profit margins are, and they can still make a living, but those guys do pretty much to the dollar.

Alex

So the second it becomes profitable to someone and the harder working businesses tend to be more profitable.

Alex

The second it becomes profitable to someone it’s sold, and we move on to the next one.

Cullen

Fantastic. And it looked like it was a big market today?

Alex

Yeah, you can safely say you saw a big market, we would have got 80 to 85 tons today.

Alex

I’m a fisherman, so I don’t want to overestimate these things. But at least 3000 boxes over a hundred different species is a bustling day.

Cullen

And what makes today a big market compared to other days when it’s not a big market. What affects the size of the market.

Alex

Sure

Alex

Fridays are traditionally the biggest day of the week for the auction because we don’t hold an auction on the weekends and people tend to buy seafood on the weekends. It’s a Friday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning thing.

Cullen

Additionally, I noticed, we met down on the floor it was a real bustle going on there. There was a tour down there? Were you giving a tour?

Alex

Yeah, we had a large school group from New South Wales from the central West. They had a four and a half hour, five-hour drive for them to get here. Fortunately, they got in yesterday evening. Otherwise, we would have had 30 increasingly disinterested schoolchildren staring me down.

Cullen

But they looked pretty interested.

Alex

They were fascinated. Considering they are 300 kilometres from the sea, they were all really switched on about  that. They asked a lot of good questions. Obviously, they wanted to try more seafood. We had a very engaged group out here which was fantastic to see.

Alex

If I’m in the kayak at two in the morning and it’s in the middle of winter, and I’m getting rained on, I might begin to have moments of doubt. But then on quickly I hook up, and I’m in love again.

Alex

I like to fish in my kayak. I like to go camping for a few days at a time. I really would like to just get stuck in and after doing this job for a week, not talk for three days straight. But yeah, just come back all salty and happy.

Cullen

And so what sort of fish are you catching?

Alex

At the moment there’s a lot around, particularly in the Pittwater in Hawkesbury, but there’s always big Flathead and Whiting.

Alex

Caught about a 73-centimetre Flathead the other day. There is also plenty of Squid.

Cullen Also, what’s a favourite fish for you to cook?  What do you love cooking?

Alex

That’s like picking a favourite child.

Alex

If I had to pick a fish, it would be the Pearl Perch. It’s a part of the Glaucosoma family, and there’s only three in it. They’re scientifically known for this sweetness. Their a beautiful, bright white flesh, and you can cook it a million different ways. Pretty much foolproof.

Cullen

So do you cook that differently quite often?

Alex

Whenever I see one, I buy one. We don’t get that many. It’s a very small volume species. It’s why you haven’t heard of it. And so how would you, how would you normally cook with are?

Alex

Because it’s a special fish, I like to make it a little bit special. I’d probably do a standing roast. We get a large lemon, cut it flat side down, and then the gut cavity will sit on top of the lemon. So score the skin, pad it dry, rub it with some olive oil and salt and then as hot as you’re up and we’ll go upright, the scheme goes crispy, the fins go crispy. Thus, you can eat them like chips, and then you get creamy, wobbly curds of flesh that flake off the bone and it’s an upright-looking fish. It’s quite impressive!

Cullen

How are we keeping the fish upright in the oven?

Alex

By plunking it on top of the lemon. If it’s sliding off cause it all, it’s got that gut cavity that it wants to sort of flatten down all that. But you can put chopsticks and sort of like antennas into the top of the lemon, and that rests in the gill breaks.

 Alex

Therefore, it just sits nice and upright, and both sides are exposed to the hot air, so it cooks evenly, and then you get to serve it upright. You can also get some wilted greens or some asparagus.

Cullen

Moreover, for people who are coming in the market and obviously, that’s their first port of call, and then they make their way through the rest of the market. What do you think that they should be looking out for at different times that that might just appear now and again that isn’t here every day that’s a bit special.

Cullen

So to buy seafood, to take home or to have to say, here?

Cullen

I think both.

Alex

To have to take home the strength of Australian fisheries is its diversity. So everyone’s heard of Snapper and Whiting and Flathead, and we’ve got 60,000 species in this country. Try something you’ve never seen before!

Alex

Try something like a Crimson Snapper, $10 a kilo for the whole fish. They are cousins’ of the Red Emperor. They are sweet; they’re meaty. You can steam them, and they’ll go curdy and creamy. You can then barbecue them, and they get firm and meaty, and they cost the same as sausages. They shouldn’t have to be that cheap.

Alex

But get something, pick it, pick it well and get it cooked to order. That’s the best way to have hot food.

Alex

Cooked prawns – just visit all the shops because it varies from piece to piece in shop to shop. No one is the best. Use your instincts and get something that appeals to you. You can go from shop to shop, get pieces and pieces, eat it down on the boardwalk, get a bottle of wine. It’s not a bad way to spend the morning.

Cullen

Fantastic. Just wrapping up because I know you’ve got to go, you have on tour coming in. I wanted to ask you, what are you having here for lunch today?

Alex

I’m getting mushrooms in Oberon tonight, so I’m probably going to try and keep it light.

Cullen

Okay, so when are you going to have that’s nice and light.

Alex

Oh, just a half a kilo of prawns on the way out.

Cullen

Thank you very much for taking the time to really enjoyed being with you.

Alex

Thanks a lot, Cullen. My pleasure