Fish 101: Ridiculously Awesome San Diego Seafood By Matt Steiger
Photos by Lyudmilla Zotova John Park
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iving so close to the ocean, you might expect it’d be easy to find a good fish place. A variety of migratory and resident species can be found just off our shores, and most are delicious and sustainably harvested. Yet people still eat fish shipped from halfway around the globe, fish markets are thin on the ground and most restaurants give seafood a mere nod, with the obligatory fish taco. I’ve spent over a decade looking for that perfect little fish shack, like you find in other coastal cities. Something unique and delicious that plays old standards, but also sticks out in your mind. I’m happy to report that I’ve finally found it in Fish 101. Fish 101 is off the Coast Highway in Leucadia. It is founded and run by chefs John and Jessica Park, who met at culinary school in the Bay Area. They ran a restaurant up there, but John says they
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were drawn to San Diego. “There’s such a great diversity of seafood here. There’s awesome fish to be had year round. We also saw there was an evolving food culture in San Diego, and we wanted to be a part of it.” For John Park, the sea is a way of life. He loves surfing, diving and fishing and spent 15 years working as a sushi chef. He loves seafood, but felt pulled away from the sushi bar. “I just realized sushi was going the wrong way. When you go to a sushi joint all you see is farmed salmon and overfished tuna. The only real seafood they get, sometimes, is uni. I wanted to get into sustainability and start thinking local.” Local it is. Fish 101 has some of the most local fish and produce around. “I get all my fish from local suppliers like Catalina Offshore. But I also buy regularly from local fisherman. They fish all night and call me at 6am to tell me what they’ve caught. We get