SIMPLE SECRETS FOR RESTAURANT-QUALITY SCALLOPS

Joey Lugo is big on being the best. Early each morning, when the clock strikes 2, he’s out the door and driving to the fish market in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx in New York, to select from the day’s catch to take back to his store, Shipwreck Seafood Boutique, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Wild salmon. Yellowfin tuna. Fresh sea scallops.

- ERIC KIM

“T guarantee my product for up to four days when I get it” he said. The seafood case, which he sells out every day, takes up just a handful of feet in his shop, while the rest of the space is dedicated to a kitchen and seating for dining in.

What you see is what you get. Lugo’s store is meticulously clean, and it took mea second to realise that it didn’t smell like anything.

“Tf your fish store smells like fish, it's not fresh,’ he said, pointing to a huge display of those ivory scallops, some of the plumpest and shiniest I'd ever seen. Indeed, they did not smell like fish, just faintly of the sea.