Catch of the day either fresh or cooked
[attach]6619[/attach]Those who have witnessed Anthony D’Ambrosio’s cooking chops on CityTv’s Look I Cook! can now get a meal prepared by the chef on a daily basis.
Although D’Ambrosio has already been running his in-house catering service In House Chef for over four years, he recently opened Fish Street Market and Open Kitchen on Yonge Street at Albertus Avenue.
“First of all it’s a full fish retail market so you can come in and buy fish like at any other market,” he says. “The next option is you can come in and we can marinade it for you so we can cut back a little of your prep time and lastly you pick a fish, you put it on the scale, you tell me how you want it — cooked, grilled, fried, steamed — anyway you want.”
Fish Street, which opened at the end of November, also offers a selection of side dishes to complete the meal, smoked eel and salmon, and a small seating area for lunch or dinner on site. Although fish and chips will be a staple on the menu, the rest of the offerings will change depending on what’s freshest.
“We’re taking away a little bit of the worry for people that don’t know how to cook and we’re helping them by doing it for them,” he says. “This area has a lot of two-income families so that there’s no time to cook, there’s no time to worry about grocery shopping so they can come here, we get it all done for them, and then they go home and now they can spend a little more quality time with their family.”
D’Ambrosio hopes customers expand their palette beyond solely salmon and tilapia and welcomes the opportunity to cook a kind of fish shoppers have never tried —like monkfish.
Since opening at the end of November, he’s enjoyed the positive feedback he’s received from people either in store or those who pop in as early as 6 a.m.
“When you take pride in something and somebody recognizes that there truly is nothing better,” he says. “I get dozens of people they’re like I just got to tell you that was the best cod or rainbow trout I ever had and that’s a perk or a high if you want to call it that more than any drug or any alcohol could give you, that’s a natural high.”