Jan. 13--New Year's Day was behind us, and for most, it was the first Monday back to the grind. In Des Plaines, some marked the occasion like a boss: downing bottles of pinot grigio on their lunch break.
What Mediterranean joie de vivre! Glasses clinked, octopus charred, whole branzino grilled in the middle of the workday. The scene might as well have been seaside on Mykonos. Instead, it took place at an off-the-drag wholesale seafood warehouse in the dead of winter.
Boston Fish Market sounds as if it could be a yuppie happy hour grill occupying some suburban office complex, but it is an actual fish market in Des Plaines. Inexplicably, next to the red snappers with eyeballs and gills on ice are rows of dining tables and high-tops, set with silverware and condiment bottles. The two flat-screens are set to the Food Network. A couple of waiters stand by with pitchers of lemon water on hand.
So I guess it's a sit-down restaurant and a market you can walk out of with 3 pounds of blue marlin. It's both, yet manages to feel like neither.
Adding to the cognitive dissonance were the khaki-clad office workers with their access badges on lanyards, uncorking bottles of wine and lunching like Europeans.
Identity problem notwithstanding, I decided to go with the flow and order the fisherman's platter ($29.99). It arrived on a plate that could double as a cricket bat. This was a bait-and-switch in a pleasant way: At that price, you could get a thick steak of grilled mahi mahi at a suburban seafood restaurant, but here, it came alongside four buttery scallops, four grilled shrimp, four pieces of pan-fried perch and a side plate of wild rice, grilled cauliflower, eggplant and potato. They surprise you with too much.
What's more: While many fishmongers have the capability to drop their catch in the fry-a-lator, Boston's is the rare business that can also charbroil what it sells. So you taste the product, augmented with char and the barest of seasonings.
Greek cooking is sometimes unfairly categorized as simple, but in some cases it's more about letting superlative products sing. The hallmark of Greek seafood chefs is not what they add to a dish, but how much they leave out. The abundance of fresh Aegean fish, caught a few paddles outside their restaurants, means dishes don't usually require more than lemon, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper.
Boston Fish Market owner/chef Louie Psihogios was a fisherman in Greece whose mother and grandmother cooked seafood in that aforementioned way. He came to America in the '70s to learn the cooking trade.
Twenty years ago this June, he opened a fish wholesale business in Chicago. Seeking a larger space, plus a desire to return to his cooking roots, Boston moved north to a Des Plaines warehouse two years ago.
I found Psihogios eating a grilled octopus salad the next table over. He told me he eats seafood twice a day, including breakfast (smoked whitefish), and claims excellent cholesterol for a 49-year-old.
I asked what being a fisherman taught him about cooking.
"Texture of the fish is most important," he said. "And you don't want sauces covering the flavor of fresh fish."
Calling Boston Fish Market a proper restaurant might be giving it too much credit. You order at the counter. The menu isn't so much curated as a bullet-point list of products they have in the back. Cooking comes mostly via two methods: breaded and deep-fried, or grilled. An encouraging sign is that they won't just offer square pieces but rather a whole fish, for those of us who believe the tastiest morsel of flesh is right beneath the cheekbone.
On New Year's Eve, Psihogios said people actually celebrated in his fish market, ordering lobster tails and sipping Champagne (no corkage fee here). In fact, he says the place averages 2,500 diners six days a week, an enviable number of customers even if it were half that figure.
I mentioned that it's not the most romantic space, but neither are most people's living rooms. He then acknowledged, well, this was pretty much his living room.
kpang@tribpub.com
Twitter @pang
Boston Fish Market
1225 Forest Ave.
Des Plaines
847-296-1111
bostonfishmkt.com
10:30 a.m.-8 p.m.
Monday-Saturday; closed Sunday
