Nothing is frozen at this San Diego taco spot. Pablo Becker, chef-owner of Fish Guts, only uses fresh fish caught by local fishermen when making his wildly popular Baja-style fish tacos that often sell out by dinner service. At the counter, you'll find beer-battered local rockfish, blackened local opah belly, and coconut-battered shrimp.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:0099% of our menu is tacos, that's basically all we do is tacos.
00:06It's at 9am here at Tunaville, I usually get the shrimp, the swordfish here.
00:12We'll see what the rockfish of the day is going to be.
00:23What's up Tommy, how are you?
00:25I'm good man, how's your morning?
00:26So far so good.
00:27Yeah?
00:28This is Tommy Gomes, he's the owner of Tunaville Market and Grocery here in Point Loma.
00:32He's 4th generation.
00:34Yeah, 4th generation commercial fisherman, lucky enough I've fished all over the world.
00:38What kind of rockfish do we have today?
00:40So today we have our local sheep head.
00:43Alright, let's get some sheep head.
00:44How many pounds do you need?
00:45I'll take like maybe a pound or yeah, like two pounds maybe.
00:49When it comes to rockfish here in Southern California, Pablo down at Fish Guts,
00:54he usually buys an assortment of them and these are beautiful examples of little rockfish.
01:00I don't understand why more restaurants aren't using these because they fry up well as a whole fish.
01:06Do you guys have an opah, Tommy?
01:08Opah belly?
01:09Yeah, belly.
01:10Yeah?
01:11Yeah, I'll take some.
01:12Okay.
01:13What else can I grab for you?
01:14Just a little bit of shrimp.
01:15Okay, $1.17.85.
01:19Alright, there you go.
01:21There you go.
01:22Thank you.
01:23Alright, so I got my fish.
01:24Now I'm heading into the restaurant.
01:32Alright, so we brought our fish back from Tunaville and we're going to get started.
01:35This is the fish we got today.
01:36We got thresher, king clip, sheep head, and some opah belly.
01:42Today we are going to have opah belly for the blackened swordfish.
01:46We're going to do the coconut shrimp and a couple of other traditional tacos.
01:51This is Ximena.
01:52She's actually our prep cook and she's our tortilla lady as well.
01:54Basically what she's doing now is amasando la masa,
01:57which basically means she's kind of breaking down the masa, taking out all the air.
02:03We get our local masa from a local place here that actually grinds up all the corn.
02:07They do the nixtamal.
02:08Start messing with it.
02:10We add a little bit of oil, we add a little bit of salt,
02:12kind of just to give it a little bit of flavor and get that consistency of the tortilla
02:15because we actually do make tortillas by hand here.
02:17So Ximena's been doing this for a long time.
02:19Okay, so she's done doing the masa.
02:20She puts it in this bowl.
02:21See these little balls?
02:22These are basically what makes the portion of it.
02:25She actually covers it with this damp towel because you don't want the masa to be really dry
02:29because you just won't get the consistency of a dry tortilla
02:33because when you fold it, the tortilla would crack.
02:35So right now she grabs a little bit of the masa, she makes the ball,
02:38she portions it on the press, and she presses it lightly
02:41to get the thickness that you desire of the tortilla.
02:44And then she places it on the comal.
02:47She actually makes, I would say, anywhere from, I'd say, 200 tortillas a day.
02:53She's super fast.
02:54On a regular day of service, you know, the tickets start coming out
02:57and I basically start telling her, okay, I need two, I need four, I need ten all day.
03:01Ninety-nine percent of our menu is tacos.
03:04That's basically all we do is tacos.
03:06The timing on it is very crucial.
03:08Everything we do is a la minu, which it's nothing that is pre-cooked, pre-battered, pre-anything.
03:14We do cook it when the ticket comes in.
03:16So normally what I get in here is I get the fish, I start portioning it out for the tacos,
03:21and once I do that, then I start doing any marinades or any batters that I need to do.
03:26We have a small kitchen, so we're very limited when it comes to refrigeration.
03:29We don't have a freezer or anything. We don't freeze anything.
03:32We buy the fish every day.
03:34Every morning I go down there and I buy the fish.
03:36So it's very, very fresh.
03:38So on a Saturday, I go through maybe, I would say, 12 pounds of rockfish.
03:43I think rockfish is a staple of what we use here at the restaurant,
03:46especially since we do have one of the most traditional tacos, which is the Baja taco,
03:51which was actually invented in Baja.
03:54So instead of using what traditionally other people use, frozen tilapia or something like that,
03:58we really want to use the best ingredient,
04:00and I do think that the West Coast has some of the best rockfish.
04:04That's about a couple filets, a couple tacos.
04:07Cool, so we just finished portioning out all the fish.
04:10Next, we're going to start our beer batter.
04:13Since Mexican food is super traditional, each family has their version of it.
04:17The fish taco was invented in Ensenada.
04:19Originally, it was just a regular batter, which was flour, breadcrumbs, beer,
04:23and that's how you would batter it.
04:25But then before COVID, I did go to Ensenada and I saw that they were using mustard,
04:29so I decided to use it, and I think it works very, very well.
04:33So it's flour hit with a little bit of mustard.
04:38You definitely don't get like a big crunchiness.
04:41I mean, you're not using any cornstarch or any baking powder or anything like that,
04:45so it's not like fish and chips.
04:47It's just super subtle. You don't want to overcomplicate the process of it.
04:50So this is for the Baja, which is one of our most traditional tacos,
04:55and for the fish and chips taco.
04:57All right, so now we're going to make some Baja taco.
05:01You have some flour. Throw the fish in the flour,
05:04whatever rockfish you have or whatever fish.
05:06Bring it over to the batter.
05:08What I do is I like to dunk the batter in there.
05:11You do want to coat the entire fish,
05:14but what I like to do so you don't have a big blob of batter,
05:20I actually like to shake the excess over of the batter.
05:26So we drop the fish, call out the tortillas,
05:30and then that's when I like to start working on the slaw.
05:33So we have two types of slaw. This is for the Baja.
05:35We have the Mexican slaw, which consists of red cabbage,
05:39green cabbage, and savoy.
05:42A little pico de gallo, which basically is Roma tomato,
05:45white onion, or yellow onion, cilantro.
05:48And this is the base for the Mexican slaw.
05:53Those are done.
05:56To plate, we get a tray, throw a little bit of chipotle aioli,
06:00and we place it on top of the fried fish.
06:05So we place both tortillas, beard-battered fish.
06:09We get our slaw.
06:13Baja tacos.
06:15Here you have the opah belly.
06:16Part of the reason why I use the belly part of the opah,
06:19it's just a lot fattier, has a little bit more flavor
06:22than using the loin or any other part of the opah.
06:26It's usually, when you get blackened,
06:28it's either swordfish or it's salmon.
06:30It's a lot of the fattier part.
06:32You do need that fat as well,
06:34kind of to cut a little bit of the saltiness, too,
06:37of the blackened.
06:38So for the blackened, what we do is
06:40we have some house-made blackened seasoning we have here.
06:45So here we have some opah belly.
06:51While those are cooking,
06:53the slaw for the blackened taco
06:57is a mix of two cabbages,
07:00green cabbage and savoy.
07:03We'll add a little bit of the red onion.
07:06Some of the jalapenos that's actually been de-veined,
07:09de-seeded, takes away the heatness.
07:12You still maintain that flavor of the jalapeno
07:14and then cilantro.
07:16So that's basically the base of the slaw.
07:18Hit it with a little bit of the chipotle aioli.
07:21Once we're ready to plate the taco,
07:23part of the reason why we do the slaw
07:25last minute when we're about to plate
07:27is so the slaw doesn't get soggy with the sauce.
07:30There's not really much flavor when it comes to cabbage,
07:32and so you do it more for anything,
07:34for the crunchiness or for texture.
07:40All right, so here, basically what we have
07:42is we have wild Baja shrimp.
07:44To me, the Baja shrimp is very sweet.
07:46Crack the tail, and we start peeling the shrimp.
07:51This is gonna be for our fried coconut shrimp.
07:56And what you want to do is...
07:59I'm just cleaning it and de-veining it.
08:03There we go.
08:05All right, so now we're gonna do the batter
08:07for the coconut shrimp.
08:09We do some all-purpose flour.
08:11We use Topo Chico here.
08:13We get some dried coconut.
08:15Basically what it is is I throw the shrimp in the batter,
08:17then I coat it with the coconut.
08:19What you want to use is non-sweetened coconut
08:22just because when you deep-fry,
08:24that coconut's gonna burn because of the sugar.
08:30Pico de gallo.
08:32Chico de aioli.
08:44Big Baja shrimp.
08:47Bubba Gump would say,
08:49Coconut shrimp.