“I never know entirely what my menu’s going to look like when I wake up. We change the menu every day–it’s a reflection of what’s coming out of our local waters and local farms.” Today Bon Appetit spends a day on the line with James London, chef and owner of Chubby Fish in Charleston, South Carolina. This dock-to-table restaurant serves some of the freshest seafood in the city and revolves its menu around whatever comes out of the waters and farms each day.
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00:00I never know entirely what my menu is going to look like when I wake up.
00:05Chubby Fish is a dock-to-table seafood restaurant located in Charleston, South Carolina.
00:10We change the menu every day.
00:12It's a reflection of what's coming out of our local waters and local farms.
00:17We have a unique situation with our suppliers where they can bring us whatever they catch.
00:22We purchase it from them.
00:24In turn, they agree that the fish was out of the water that day or the day prior.
00:29To us, that's entirely worth it.
00:35I'm James Lunden. This is Chubby Fish.
00:37It is 9 a.m. We're waiting on our first fish delivery of the day.
00:40So let's go inside. We'll wait together.
00:42At Chubby Fish, we're having to evolve with what Mother Nature gives us in terms of seafood for the day.
00:48So this is Crosby's Seafood Pulling Up.
00:50They're going to have our main fish delivery for the day.
00:55Right now, we're dealing with a full moon.
00:59And whenever we have a full moon, we're dealing with major tidal changes,
01:04which always kind of disrupts what's happening with the fishing.
01:08It forces us to pivot a little bit.
01:10We have some American Red Snapper coming in.
01:13But what I do is I check our fish, make sure those eyes are nice and pretty,
01:18and make sure those gills are nice and blood red.
01:22And those guys are sitting really, really pretty.
01:24We've got a beautiful grouper right here.
01:26We love cobia.
01:28So we do this either for crudo or tataki.
01:32We'll do this for ceviche.
01:34These are great tilefish.
01:36These are generally bycatch.
01:38Anything that's kind of out of the norm are things that we really get excited about.
01:45So this is John Fuss.
01:46He's just started bringing us some of these beautiful sheepshead that he's been targeting.
01:52So this will be our poach fish for this evening.
01:55That keeps it really juicy, and it keeps it from too aggressive of a heat.
02:00So we get a really succulent product at the end of the day.
02:02This is from sunburst trout.
02:04Really some of the best trout that I've ever worked with.
02:06A lot of times when it comes to farm trout, you can kind of decipher a pond flavor to them.
02:13These guys are raised in running water.
02:15These are rainbow trout.
02:17You can see they're still in rigor.
02:20That's how fresh they are.
02:21That's pretty wild.
02:22You can see how ruby that flesh is.
02:25It's not pale white like you see with a lot of farm-raised trout.
02:28We generally put these on the menu once, maybe twice a week.
02:32But this is 20 trout and should be done with us tonight.
02:36All right, so I'm going to throw this in the walk-in.
02:41It's 11.45 a.m.
02:43Everybody's on their stations getting ready for the evening.
02:47Lorenzo here is breaking down this amazing trout that came in.
02:52This will be one of our two whole fish for the evening.
02:55As much as possible, we like to present it in its natural element.
02:59We like to present it whole so people can really get accustomed to the fish.
03:03Chubby fish is 1,000 square feet.
03:06We'll do maybe 165 covers tonight.
03:08This is how we operate.
03:09We sell through everything that we bring in today.
03:13All right, so Lorenzo's cleaning trout.
03:15So I'm going to jump in and clean up a couple of these flounders.
03:18These flounders are coming out of North Carolina.
03:21We treat these pretty simply as well.
03:23So I do a quick scale.
03:25What we do is we take the head off.
03:26So I just find this little belly cavity right behind these fins.
03:30And I just cut around, moving that fin.
03:33I just take off these side fins or the engawa.
03:36Flounder is a flat fish, whereas most round fish have two fillets.
03:41Flounder has four fillets that we can pull off.
03:44We're going to do this fish whole today.
03:46We'll hit them with salt on both sides.
03:48We'll drop them into a ripping hot pan, throw them in the oven, peel off the skin,
03:53and we'll baste it through with a little bit of salt and butter.
03:57That leaves the fish really naked so you can kind of taste the uniqueness of flounder.
04:02We're going to be serving this with a little bit of ginger scallion sauce.
04:05That just stays out of the way of the inherent flavor of the fish
04:09and really just lets it shine.
04:11Less is more when it comes to fish of this quality.
04:15Flounder is a fish that we can catch year-round.
04:18Where Charleston is located, you have these two main fisheries,
04:21and they're overlapping right at Charleston,
04:23which means we get double the fun, double the diversity of anywhere else in the country.
04:29What we'll do with the heads today is we'll make a broth out of these,
04:33and that will kind of serve as the base of our poach bath.
04:37So when we get something that we've never worked with,
04:40when we're testing out a new fish, we're going to try poaching it first.
04:44We're going to try grilling it, curing it in salt, olive oil, lime juice, jalapenos, cilantro stems.
04:51We're a big fan of slow cooking methods,
04:55methods of cookery that are not going to interfere with the flavor of the fish
05:00and are not going to hammer the fish by overcooking the part that we're trying to sear.
05:08Flounder's done. We're going to roast off these heads.
05:13I'll lay these flounders out so they can dry out a little bit underneath the fan in the walk-in
05:18so that when we chuck it in our pan later on, it's going to give us a nice clean release.
05:27It's 1230. Our shrimp arrived at the dock, so we're going to go down there, pick it up.
05:32The boat just came in. It would be too late in the day for them to catch a delivery to us,
05:38so in order to get the best product possible, we drive right across the bridge.
05:42So I do the pickup, A, because I like to keep fostering the relationships with the purveyors,
05:48but also I want to take weight off of the kitchen.
05:51Every day they're coming in and they're prepping from scratch.
05:54They don't have stuff left over from the night before. We sell through everything,
05:58so even with them getting there at 11 a.m. every single day, it's a scramble to get that station up and running.
06:04Sure, we can simplify our menu, we can simplify our concept,
06:07but we're really happy with having to go the extra mile to put the best product on the plate.
06:13You come for your shrimp?
06:14Absolutely.
06:15All right.
06:16Cindy Tarvin is the woman who owns Tarvin Seafood, and it's completely a family operation.
06:22Predominantly what we'll be picking up today will be our Carolina white shrimp.
06:26For our chili garlic shrimp, with a little bit of aromatics, we know how good her product is.
06:31If she does not have shrimp, then we don't have shrimp on the menu at Chubby Fish.
06:35That's how important she is to our operation.
06:38James has a standing order of 10 pounds a day.
06:41And then sometimes we've got to bump up to 15.
06:44How long will this shrimp last?
06:46This will be gone tonight.
06:47Thank you so much, Cindy. Great seeing you.
06:49You're welcome, James. Have a good rest of the day.
06:51You as well.
06:53We've got a new restaurant under construction, and we'll jump next door and check it out.
06:58So while we're under construction, we constantly have to pop over, make sure everything's kind of up to our standards.
07:04So I spend a good bit of time over here.
07:06This is kind of a speakeasy concept.
07:09With Chubby Fish, we have a very long wait.
07:12This gives us a place to have people come, have some small bites if they're hungry,
07:16have some cocktails before they head over to Chubby Fish for their table.
07:20This light over here, it's broken.
07:22I know I need to get that replaced now.
07:25Yesterday, I had these temporary ACs installed so that we could start paper and wallpaper.
07:32I'm not getting any cooling out of these.
07:35So the humidity in Charleston is like taking a warm bath.
07:38If we have humidity in here, the wallpaper will fall right off the wall.
07:42So we have to get it air-conditioned.
07:45You know, I told myself after Chubby Fish I was never going to open up a second restaurant.
07:50But it's also, you know, I really wanted to make sure that my people have places to grow into,
07:55places to manage as they work their way up.
07:58So that was a big impetus.
08:00I have a really solid crew, two sous chefs, Will and Rod.
08:03They're both killing it over at Chubby Fish.
08:06I'll mainly focus on getting this kitchen up and running, getting the private dining going, the bar menu going.
08:12Then I'll probably just turn it over to one of those guys and let them run with it.
08:16Let's head back next door and see what's going on over there.
08:23We've talked a lot about our fish throughout the course of the day.
08:27But we also have a lot of other items on the menu.
08:29These are our caviar sammies.
08:31Before we had caviar service on the menu, it was an incredible dish.
08:36But it was also very time-consuming.
08:39Sometimes we would get hit with like four, five, six of those at one time.
08:43And it basically took all the steam out of the kitchen.
08:46So we figured this would be a nice quick way for people to eat their caviar.
08:50We get to do caviar at a very approachable price point, which is big for us.
08:54I'll make 75, 100 of these tonight.
08:57People love them.
08:58We had our whipped creme fraiche that went on top.
09:01A little bit of lemon zest.
09:03Throw them in the oven so they can get nice and toasty.
09:06Then I'm going to brush with a little bit of drawn butter.
09:08And that's our caviar sammy.
09:12So it's 4.35.
09:14We are now doing our front of the house lineup.
09:17And this is where we communicate all of our changes, additions, any notes we want to make on food, on service.
09:24The poach fish for the day is going to be sheep's head.
09:27New fishermen on the sheep's head, caught this morning.
09:30I'm really excited about this guy.
09:32The sheep's head were in rigor this morning, so sell away on that.
09:36Definitely sell away on those trout.
09:38They have a shorter shelf life, so let's get them out of the building as quickly as possible.
09:47So it's 5 o'clock. We are ready for service.
09:51We got a line of people who are ready to eat.
09:54So now we're going to do it.
09:56Let's go on in.
09:58When you come in, you're never getting an experience at Chubby Fish that you've had prior.
10:03And it's constantly searching for the best product out there, the freshest product out there.
10:09It's a constant grind, but I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.