Fish Market

I don't like the taste of seafood. It is a hold over from my childhood pickiness which I am trying to beat back. But it is a slow process to change ones taste. When it comes to seafood my basic issue is that I don't like things that taste like the ocean- that salty, fishy, heaviness tastes the way fishing docks smell and it isn't my game.

So I have been told to eat really fresh fish. At Suisan Market in Hilo, HI one side of the store is a loading dock where the boats pull up and dump the fish. They are cleaned and then someone walks 15 feet to the cooler in the store. Fresh as it comes.

Poke is a state dish. It is basically a variety of raw fish salads. If you are like me and don't like seafood, this sounds crazy. If you are like most people and fish is your pleasure then heaven on earth can be found at Suisan Market in Hilo.

This year I learned that one ahi tuna has been sold at the Honolulu for $150,000- in Japan, at the Tsukiji fish market blue fin has gone for $173,000. Aside from an unsophisticated fish palette, it also seems nuts to me that a fish which sits so high on the food chain- and therefore is drenched in heavy metals- would be so prized. But logic often defies eating habits for me and most other people.

I ate mahi mahi and ahi. It didn't taste like the ocean, nice and clean the way people have told me it tastes. Poke will be an adventure at a later date.