By Richard Foss, Cuisine and Culture Writer
The San Pedro Fish Market and Restaurant recently announced plans to open three new outlets, a remarkable burst of activity from a place that has been in one location for more than 60 years. Co-owner Mike Ungaro said it’s not unprecedented.
“Our only other expansion was acquiring Shamrock Seafood in Wilmington in the 70s,” Ungaro said. “They did processing and distribution and we turned that into a restaurant in the 80s. It’s not that we didn’t want to expand, because Tommy Amalfitano, one of the founders, always wanted to open more fish markets. He didn’t have the help to do that.”
Shamrock Seafood has a limited menu and counter service; two of the new operations (in Palos Verdes and Torrance) will follow that style. The third new establishment (in Long Beach) will be a full service restaurant. Ungaro said that he had a revelation after observing the popularity of fast casual seafood chains like Slapfish and California Fish Grill.
“We looked at that and thought, ‘We’re already doing a version of what those guys are doing out of our Wilmington location, and we have people coming from Dana Point to Malibu for it. There’s clearly a demand and we’ve figured out how to supply it. We can hybridize what they do with what we do and call it the San Pedro Fish Market Grill,’” Ungaro said. “We let people create their own menu, pick their seafood and we’ll make it a sandwich, a salad, a plate, burrito, tacos… they create their own experience. We’ll also incorporate our world famous shrimp tray, which is our biggest seller.”
The Long Beach restaurant in the former Joe’s Crab Shack will resemble the original San Pedro Fish Market. Ungaro’s vision of why that will work is interesting.
“We’ve been around so long, doing what we’re doing that I think of us less as a restaurant [and more] as an entertainment destination,” he said. “I looked at where our customers come from and 94 percent travel more than five miles to visit us. That’s the opposite ratio from most restaurants. We have repeat customers from a 100-mile radius, including a lot in Santa Ana and as far away as San Bernardino. We’ll be able to say, ‘If you don’t want to come to San Pedro on weekends and wait in the crowd, you can get the same great flavors any day closer to home.’”
The popularity of the San Pedro Fish Market with outsiders and Ungaro’s inspiration for thinking about the place as an entertainment destination, may spring from the popularity of the Kings Of Fish reality TV series that is filmed there. Ungaro says that the series not only introduced the place to customers, but may be responsible for the restaurant’s survival.
“I am amazed at the number of people who come down because they saw us in that show,” he said. “They come up to me and ask, ‘Is this where Tommy or Henry works?’ Apparently they have no idea that I’m in the show too. It has won three international awards and been viewed [more than] 50 million times on our YouTube channel and it has opened up an entirely new opportunity for us to tell our story. In the early days of the redevelopment of the waterfront I realized early on that we weren’t part of that plan. They didn’t know who we were or what our story was. Now, we’re the only ones who are considered as an anchor tenant and that’s because we told our story. The new episodes are going to focus on opening these new locations. We had two episodes come out [the past] Friday and two today. We are going to show the risks and rewards, all the drama behind it and it’s going to send people to all of our places.
To view episodes, check the Kings of Fish YouTube channel or kingsoffish.com.