Hong Kong’s seafood whisperer Peter Kam takes us on a pre-dawn tour of the city’s premier fish market
PostMag gains rare entry into Aberdeen’s Wholesale Fish Market with the men who supply many of Hong Kong’s Michelin-starred kitchens and the chefs who helm them – just days before the annual fishing moratorium
At 5am, the Aberdeen Wholesale Fish Market – the oldest and largest in town – is not for the public. It’s a maze of fluorescent lights, flooded floors and shouted Cantonese, where deals are made in half-sentences and the morning’s best catch disappears before the city wakes. At this hour, Hong Kong’s finest kitchens are still dark, their chefs still fast asleep.
Instead, there is Peter Kam, 38, a self-taught fish aficionado with a near-mystical read on gills and gloss. His company, Peter Seafood, has been supplying the restaurants that dominate the city’s awards lists for more than a decade. His discerning hands shop for chefs who insist on live catches despite the rising costs – the very chefs whose exacting standards are keeping a depleted local fishing industry above water.
Kam steps over the wet concrete floor, his pace brisk. Behind him, a troupe of chefs: Manav Tuli of Leela, Leung Chun-wah of Racines and Paolo Olivieri of Dieci, who are shadowing Kam and his right-hand man, Gabe Chan – an ex-Noma stagiaire turned seafood buyer – to witness what chefs normally only see dead, prepped and delivered in an icy styrofoam box.
“Come look at this blue-lobster tank,” Kam calls over his shoulder, already speed-walking in his wellies while the chefs, in trainers, scramble behind him. The tank is one of many, stacked like a living seafood library, humming with aerators and the faint electric crackle of life-support systems. “Just this tank […] probably costs tens of thousands already.”