To move from the open sea straight to a working kitchen is a jolting experience, because you’re leaving the dominion of water for a place where fire reigns supreme. In Esca’s kitchen, the tall flames on the ranges glint like toothy half-smiles.
“Look at that rainbow effect, look at that sheen!” Dave is filleting a huge, rich halibut, slipping his knife along its row of pearly vertebrae. “Fish like this are fattest in winter,” he says. “Partly because of the cold, and partly because they’re going to spawn soon and need the energy reserves. Okay, now here’s a salmon. Put your hand in the cavity—yeah, right in the belly. Feel the oil? Well, that’s what we’re after!”
Dave’s voice is as sandpapery as his one-day beard, and every few minutes he’s on the phone, doing deals with fishermen and fish brokers. He shows me live razor clams from Long Island, striped bass provided by Pete, shimmering new whitebait from Jimmy, tiny scallops like fairy fans, Hawaiian moonfish (opah), weakfish just bought off some fellows under the Atlantic Beach Bridge. “My cooking is rooted in relationships,” Dave says. Artie calls in about some fantastically fresh cod he’s just got his hands on, from Stellwagen Bank, 25 miles east of Boston; afterward, Dave turns to me and says, “Cod is the most important fish in the world, historically and commercially, and I love the stuff. It was my grandmother’s favorite fish. Her name was Gertie Pasternack; she had a little family-style restaurant in Coney Island, and she never, ever ate fish off the bone. She would heat the cod over a low flame, without liquid, so it would sort of braise itself.” Dave shows me how he roasts cod steaks in a dusting of special flour (his secret recipe) that, together with the oil in the fish, creates a golden, caramelized crust. When I begin to ply him with questions about seafood cookery, he answers me directly, unguardedly; and when I remark on the excellence of a soup one of his cooks is preparing, he says, “Listen, put some fatty fish in your soup. Some good mackerel, for instance—just enough, not too much. It may be unorthodox, but it gives the soup body.”
Hours later, as dinnertime arrives and the cooks are dancing furiously at their stoves, Dave pulls me downstairs to his walk-in refrigerator to look at the cod that’s just come in from Artie. In the frosty room, he dandles a big, speckled beauty.
“You gotta see this, you gotta feel it,” he says. As he draws near, his face fills my field of vision, his smile radiant, exultant. “This cod is so fresh its muscles are still tight; it’s stiff as my arm. Hold it—that’s right. Man, you could drive a nail with that thing!”
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