Fish Market Keeps Christmas Eve Tradition Alive

On Friday morning, cars lined State Street all around the #1 Fish Market. Cars were parked on side streets, and people hustled across the state thoroughfare with grocery bags full of seafood. The market’s own small parking lot was completely full. A line snaked out the door and stretched across the entire front of the building. Some people would be there for hours. But everyone was in a good mood.

They were part of an annual ritual that has been going on for years. The #1 Fish Market — which many consider the best in the New Haven area — becomes the epicenter not only for anyone who wants seafood for their holiday meal, but also specifically for the Italian-American tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes, which stipulates that a family serve an enormous meal of, you guessed it, seven fishes on Christmas Eve.

#1 Fish Market’s clientele is a microcosm of the Greater New Haven area — from billionaires and professors to recent immigrants, said owner Robert McNeil, who spoke with the Independent on Wednesday morning at the market, in between selling fish to customers at the beginning of the rush.

On any given day in his shop, McNeil said, ​“you’ll have a woman from the hills of Peru exchanging ceviche recipes with a state Supreme Court judge. It’s totally cool and it’s what America is all about.”

McNeil opened #1 Fish Market on May 1, 1979, in its current location just over the New Haven-Hamden line, after starting off driving a truck for another New Haven-based seafood company.

“I was killing myself for minimum wage,” McNeil said. So he gave notice on that job after three months. But he discovered that he liked handling and working with fish. He liked the business. And he and his boss had developed a real camaraderie between them. So, with his employer’s blessing, McNeil struck out on his own, on State Street just north of the New Haven-Hamden, on the banks of the marsh of the Quinnipiac River.

“I was up against it from the day I opened,” McNeil said, regarding the hard work and slim profits involved in running a fish market. But also, ​“the day I opened, I made a commitment, and I’m seeing it through.”

He owes his long-term success, he said, to the fact that ​“I woke up for 25 years in the middle of the night, drove to the Fulton Fish Market” in New York City, ​“and handpicked my stuff.”

McNeil still gets his fish from there, as well as from purveyors in Stonington, Cape Cod, Boston, and Maine. Some selections, like swordfish, come from a continent away. ​“Today, everything is on a global scale,” he said.

McNeil has seen a lot of changes since he opened. For starters, business is harder than it used to be. Fish have become more scarce, and the fishing industry more heavily regulated. For McNeil, this has driven up the costs of doing business. ​“I’m the busiest market around and last year we lost money,” he said, even though his numbers were up from the year before. He has had a long-held dream to expand his market, he said, but economic realities may have put that dream out of reach. ​“The fish is so expensive and the business is so difficult,” he said.

But #1 Fish Market has evolved, too. As McNeil noticed that fewer people seemed to be cooking, he moved into more prepared fish dishes as a result. He sees the future of his business as heading further in that direction. During the summer, he also sells fresh produce from the organic farm he lives on in Wallingford. ​“Fish is what keeps the roof over my head,” he said. ​“Farming is just one more thing I can offer my customers.”

Other things, however, have stayed constant. He’s been working with pretty much the same crew for years, and his customers have proven loyal; some remember his market long after they’ve moved away. For 25 years, McNeil said, he’s gotten postcards from Japan, from the family of a doctor who studied and practiced at Yale. ​“I saw both of his children born and now they’re in college,” he said.

Another family moved to New Hampshire and sent him a note with a list of the things they would miss most about living in New Haven. “#1 Fish Market was second to spring,” McNeil said with a laugh.

On a good Saturday in the summer, McNeil said, #1 Fish Market gets 250 customers a day. In the runup to Christmas, the market gets over 600 advance orders and at least another 300 walk-ins. They come from all over the greater New Haven area. They drive up from Fairfield, over from Bethany, down from Hartford and Old Lyme. And they aren’t buying just a couple flounder filets; they’re buying fish by the pound, often seven different kinds, and enough to feed family and friends. McNeil is there for all of it; in the week preceding Christmas Eve, he stays in an apartment attached to the store to work the extra hours.

“I ship a $3,000 order to an attorney in Maryland,” McNeil said. That attorney used to practice law in New Haven and has 10 children — a big holiday celebration. ​“I FedEx it to him,” he said.

McNeil has noticed tastes changing in the Seven Fishes tradition. As his older clientele have passed away, the old-school dishes of eel and salt cod have mostly passed with them. People eat different fishes now, and they have to pay a lot more for them. But on Christmas, they do.

“I value a dollar as much as the next guy,” McNeil said on Wednesday, ​“but it’s not just about money…. When I am behind the counter and my customers are getting my fish and my produce, there’s nothing better for me.”

And sure enough, Friday morning, the day before Christmas Eve, McNeil, his family, and his crew were behind the counter, helping people with their orders and taking walk-ins — and as often as not, dispensing recipes along with the fish. It’s better to cook it whole, one of the crew said, and cover it too. And that big filet? said McNeil’s daughter at the register. Coat it in garlic and butter, bake it at 375 degrees until it’s done. The customer got out a notepad to ask questions and write down the details.

Sisters Terri Santillo of Hamden and Ann Caruso of New Haven had come to #1 Fish Market together for their order.

“We’re doing swordfish over capellini aioli,” Santillo began. Caruso finished her thought. ​“We start with stuffed clams and crab cakes.” Santillo again, with a small laugh: ​“We don’t do the seven — we’re doing probably about five.”

They explained that one of the dishes they’d stopped making was baccalà, or salt cod; it took too long to prepare. That launched them into a series of memories about celebrating with their own parents, and the way the smell of the baccalà filled the house.

A customer standing nearby, waiting to pay for her own order, interjected, a broad smile on her face. ​“That’s what I think of as Christmas — the smell of the baccalà,” she said.

Caruso nodded. ​“It’s our tradition,” she said.

The sisters got their order and paid. ​“You know where we’re going now?” Caruso said. ​“To visit cemeteries. It’s tradition. But I don’t know if the younger generation is going to do it. Sometimes I think we’re the dinosaurs.”

Though not far behind Santillo and Caruso in line, maybe another holiday ritual was beginning. Patricia Mason of West Haven, who came prepared for the long wait with a book, was there to buy Chilean sea bass.

“My family decided they wanted to do something non-traditional,” she said. ​“Normally we’d have turkey and ham.” Mason explained that they’d be having beef tenderloin along with the sea bass. ​“I don’t do beef,” she said. ​“I’ll make sure I pig out on the sea bass.”

She got her order along with the same warm welcome the crew gave everyone. In the holiday season, the price of sea bass was running high, she noted with a wry smile.

“It’s an expensive non-tradition,” she said. ​“But it’s worth it.”