Published: June 18, 2008 12:41 am      

Fishing for good quality

What are some tips for buying seafood?

FAIRMONT — Jimmy Lamb, owner of the Aquarium Lounge in Fairmont, has a pretty simple way of knowing when fish is at its freshest.

“When it’s caught,” he joked.

Still, he and other food service workers offered up some tips so customers know they are buying the freshest piece of salmon or tuna or mahi-mahi.

“You can tell by the color of it and, if you are able to touch it, buy it if it has a nice firm texture, no slime and no discoloration,” Lamb said.

Many restaurateurs and fishmongers agree that looking and touching — and smelling — a piece of fish will guide consumers to making good choices.

“If it’s super, super fresh, it will not have any odor, not matter what it is,” Lamb said. “If it has an odor to it, it’s on its way to the bad side.”

Although Danny Amos, the lead seafood clerk at the Eastpointe Kroger, noted that some fish varieties differ from others.

“Some fish have a stronger odor than others,” he said. “But a majority, you can tell if a fish is not good by the smell.”

Customers who buy an entire fish also can look at its eyes, noted Drew Kiszka, owner and chef at the Glasshouse Grille as well as The Flying Fish, which just relocated to the Seneca Center in Morgantown near the Glasshouse Grille.

“When it’s the whole fish, it should have clear eyes,” Kiszka said. “And if you lift under the gills, it should be a bright red color, not gray or brownish.”

For filets, you want to make sure they have the proper color for the type of fish, such as a solid white for halibut and pink for snapper or grouper.

However, a lighter pink on a salmon can mean that it is not as fresh as it should be, said John Martin, manager of the meat department at the Shop ‘n Save at the Middletown Mall in Fairmont.

“Most of the fresh fish comes in frozen,” he said. “We don’t sell a lot of fresh fish. And we ice it down to keep it chilled. It’s got a three to four day hold on it, so once it comes in, we examine it each morning.”

In some cases, avoiding fish that already has been frozen can be difficult, Lamb noted.

“A lot of it is frozen at sea so when you get it, it’s been frozen once so they can preserve it,” he said. “Orange roughy is always frozen because it’s caught in the Netherlands and there is no way they can ship it to the U.S. and keep it fresh.”

While most types of fish are available year-round, some types are better at different times of the year.

Farm-raised salmon is readily available year-round, Kiszka said, but the season for wild salmon starts in the spring and runs through summer.

“The news out the Pacific Northwest has not been good,” he said. “Wild salmon is way down. In some of the rivers, they are having problems that they’ve never seen before, some of it due to water flow or lack thereof. Supposedly it’s one of the worst years in recent memory.”

Also, both Lamb and Amos of Kroger noted a general rule of thumb for buying oysters: “You only buy oysters in months that end in ‘r,’” Lamb said. “That’s when they are supposed to be their best.”

“We won’t have them again until late September,” Amos said.

One really popular fish has been tilapia, said Martin of Shop ‘n Save.

“That’s one of the fastest-growing sales-wise,” he said. “It’s one of the better priced better fishes out there.”

As for cooking fish, Lamb prefers broiling to grilling. “I don’t like the char taste,” he said. “I think it ruins food.”

But for those who want to take advantage of the summertime and fire up the grill, the experts suggest choosing the thicker, meatier types of fish such as tuna, salmon and swordfish.

Those types of fish can be placed directly on the grill, while flakier types would have to be grilled on top of foil, Kiszka said. He also has some advice on preparing the fish for grilling:

“I tell people not to overmarinate,” he said. “Fish is very delicate and doesn’t have the density of beef or pork. For some things, like shrimp and thinner cuts of fish, it may only take 10-15 minutes in the marinade, but never more than half an hour. And I use the same marinade to brush on while I’m cooking.”

E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.