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How Yama Seafood Sells 8,000 Pounds of Tuna to NYC's Michelin-Starred Restaurants — Vendors - YouTube
Channel: Eater
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- Tuna's one of those things where
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it's the riskiest business.
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You can make a lot of money,
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and sometimes you can lose a lot of money.
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Tuna is based on trust.
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In order for us to source
the best quality tuna,
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we always have to be honest
with who we buy from.
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Otherwise, why would
they wanna sell to us?
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Fridays are really busy
because Friday is where we do
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about a third of our
business for the week.
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So probably by a little after 3:00 AM,
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we start cutting our first tuna.
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Tuna's very difficult because
every fish is different.
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From coloring, to texture, to fat content.
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So on some days, we have to keep cutting,
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and cutting, and cutting,
until we find the right one.
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Because obviously,
quality is more important
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than anything else.
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'Cause we obviously have
a reputation on the line.
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(intense music)
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TsuruTonTan kitchen, one
case, three piece, 14, 16.
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- Hi, my name is Nobu Yamanashi.
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I'm the director of Yama Seafood.
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We're here in Jersey City, New Jersey.
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(intense dramatic music)
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There's many different
kinds of fish in the world,
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but tuna is definitely the core business.
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It can really make or break a week for us.
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Sushi is our main clientele,
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sushi restaurants, but we provide tuna
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to various different types of cuisines.
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From three Michelin star restaurants
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to poke takeout restaurants.
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My father's name is Kingo Yamanashi.
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He came to the States
when he was 22 years old.
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Heard about wild Boston bluefin tuna
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that was just kinda being
tossed back into the waters
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'cause it was just sports fishing.
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And he just offered them a dollar a pound.
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Load up the van, come back to New York.
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Show the chefs, "Hey this is what I have.
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Cut it down yourself and
take whatever cut you want."
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We handle four kinds of tuna, right?
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Albacore, bigeye, yellowfin, bluefin.
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All yellowfin and bigeye tuna are wild.
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Currently, bluefin tuna is
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95% farmed because the wild
bluefin's season's over.
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You can get it from South America,
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or you can get it from Brazil.
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Pretty much any anywhere in the world.
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Wherever there's good tuna,
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we'll find it and we'll buy it.
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(workers busily clattering boxes)
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Morning!
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My routine is check, make
sure I didn't miss any orders
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from my customers, and then start packing
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in the local fish departments.
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Bansha, you're a four piece, six, seven,
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scale, head off, head deli.
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Bonnie two, three, four size,
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and Hirame two, four pound up.
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You're Izakaya,
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Masa, you're a four piece.
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- All right, this is our sengyo section
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which is our Japanese fish.
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We import fish from Japan.
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This is where we do our Hokkaido uni.
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You got your Shim-aji madai.
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All your wild, exotic fish.
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This is how they come from Japan,
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wild bluefin tuna from Miyazaki.
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He literally told me,
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"I don't care about price,
I'll pay up to $20-$50 a pound.
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Just give me the best thing."
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So he made me start from
the best tuna vendor
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in Toyosu in Japan, Yamayuki,
and this what it is.
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This how it came out a week later.
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So this is where we
handle all of our salmon.
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It's all over here.
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We sell thousands and
thousands of pounds a week,
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consists of so many varieties.
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Every chef has their preferences,
especially king salmon.
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They'll say, "Give me ora king salmon."
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or "Give me bakkafrost
from the Faroe islands."
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This is our scale machine,
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so you put a fish through it
and this scales the salmon
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or any kind of fish.
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In a day, we probably go through
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like almost 100 pounds
just worth of scales alone.
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So we have all of our uni.
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We have a direct relationship
with the uni processor
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in Hokkaido, which is pretty rare,
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because most people have
to buy it from the market.
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We sell, I think two to 300 trays a week,
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either different brand,
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one of our high-end Korean restaurants
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are using Ogawa brand.
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It's covered but it's all salt water
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so it's not treated with any chemicals.
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It's all pretty much as natural
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as cracking uni open itself.
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Live soft-shell crab.
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These are shiso leaves by Oba.
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Fresh wasabi from Japan
that we wrapped up.
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Oh, that's Louis.
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He's been with us for,
"Lucho, what, 15 years?"
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- Me?
- Yeah.
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- Almost 16.
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Oh, 16, young guy.
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He's been managing our
shellfish department.
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So he's doing quality control.
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He's listening the sound of the oyster
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to see if it's still alive or not.
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So tuna is something that we
built our business off of.
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My father started it from
nothing in 40, 50 years ago.
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So this is our tuna room.
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How many tuna orders do we do on a Friday?
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- Friday?
- How many restaurants?
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- How many restaurants?
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- Yeah, on a Friday.
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- Probably 250.
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- Yeah, 250.
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- Masakazu Ito is our
tuna manager, tuna buyer.
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He's been with the department
for about 15 years now.
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He's been our core in making
sure the Yama Seafood name
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remains for the tuna side.
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- We move through around
8,000 pounds of tuna.
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And I gotta have everything
ready by 7 o'clock.
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The local big guys around here,
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they're my favorite 'cause of the boats.
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They only go out for probably a week.
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The other countries, they
go out for like month.
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If they go out for like a
week, then it's pretty fresh.
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(upbeat dramatic music)
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This fish has good color.
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This one on the other
hand, it's little pale.
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This one is really pale, no fat.
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I'm kinda disappointed by this fish.
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So I only got one good fish out of three.
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So basically, they're
gonna flip the coffin.
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- [Producer] It's like, no joke?
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- It's not,
- [Producer] That's what you guys
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call it?
- That's what we call it.
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So when I ask a vendor, how
many coffins am I getting?
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He'll be like, "Yeah,
four coffins." (laughs)
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(ice clattering)
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Under the ice is thousands
and thousands of pounds
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of tuna over here.
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The cutting table's here.
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- We have a butcher that
breaks down the tuna
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into four loins, two
bellies, two backside.
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And then we have a trimmer
that cleans it up nicely
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to make it look professional.
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The trimmers end up weighing it.
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Hand-writes the weight on
and it lays down the table.
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(upbeat music)
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The table here is where our
best fish of the day is.
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Along the back is where maybe
the lesser quality per se,
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or your number twos or your poke quality.
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You know, we pretty much
only buy number one tuna
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whether it be yellowfin or a bigeye.
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But we cut it, it wasn't
necessarily the quality
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that we pay for number one.
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Now those, maybe we sell it
to our number two customer,
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poke customers.
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- After we lined them up, my
job to allocate all the tunas
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depending on how much they pay.
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This is the Michelin three-star
restaurant, Le Bernardin.
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They like the 10 to 15 pound tuna loin,
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so I'm gonna give this two belly loins.
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The sushi restaurant likes fatty fish,
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but French, they don't like fatty fish.
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They like lean fish with good colors,
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so that's what I'm looking for.
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So I got an order for
restaurant Daniel in New York.
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I'm going to give him the belly piece.
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He doesn't like the tail part.
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So I basically, I cut the tail off
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and I'm giving him 14.8 pounds.
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(boxes clattering)
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- You know, the best farmed
bluefin tuna is from Spain.
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The Spain bluefin tuna
are called jumbo bluefin.
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Anywhere from 400 pounds
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to
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mid 500s.
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We try not to go too big just
because that's not a quality
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that we believe is in best
interest of our clients.
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'Cause if it gets too big, it's too fatty
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and it just doesn't taste as good.
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- Okay, this is a farm-raised
bluefin from Spain.
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It weighs 430 pounds.
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This tuna is for six restaurants.
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(metal clattering)
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Oh, the samurai in the house.
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This is the tuna knife.
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I think it cost around $5,000.
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This is really sharp.
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(upbeat music)
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Basically, this is the Spanish bluefin.
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So I'm gonna cut it in two blocks.
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So basically, we gonna saku
these blocks into pieces
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and then we gonna deep
freeze in a blast freezer.
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- [Nobu] So saku is when
after we break down the whole
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tuna and take the skin
off, take the bones out,
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and cut into bop blocks, saku blocks.
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So you can just cut it
into sushi or nigiri.
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(upbeat music)
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If you use a regular freezer,
that's not gonna work.
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As long as you thaw it the right way,
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you're not gonna see the
difference between the fresh
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and the frozen.
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- So this is where we
do a lot of our azukari.
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This is our customer out in
Charleston, Ridgewood, New York.
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All these together, probably
three or 4,000 pounds
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worth of azukari
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And plus like super frozen products
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that we're trying to sell
in the future as well.
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All the smaller distributors
don't have the facility
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like this, where they can
keep anything like this.
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They may not even have a super freezer.
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They may have one chest
freezer, they hold a little bit.
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Azukari is a Japanese term where we keep,
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we hold the items for our customers.
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We make sure our customers
can provide the best tuna
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all throughout the year
during the off season.
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It's not like we're a
freezer storage facility
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where we charge a dollar a
pound a month or something.
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This is something that
we do for our customers.
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But obviously, we can't offer
it to everybody as well.
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And inside here, we have
eight to 10 chest freezers
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that are kept at, it says
minus 78, right there.
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They draw a diagram or even better.
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Some of them even come here and they say,
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"I want you to cut it exactly this way."
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Because that's how it works for them.
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If we do it whatever our way,
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it doesn't necessarily work for them.
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So each azukari we do
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has to be carefully
explained and executed.
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Otherwise, it won't be up to
the standards of our customers.
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Drivers start coming in soon
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and then they just pick it out,
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double check everything,
and load the van with it.
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Our whole process is very
important, especially drivers.
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Well, because they're our eyes and ears
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outside of our facility.
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And obviously, they're the
ones that do the last check.
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So if any mistake that's
made in the warehouse,
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they're the ones that can
catch it and resolve it.
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So before it goes out, they
double-check everything.
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And if there's any issues,
we fix it before they go out.
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And there's only a few rules
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that my father really wanted
people ingrain in their brains.
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When you come in in the morning,
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make sure everyone hears
you say good morning.
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If you can't do it here as a mentality,
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you can't do it out there.
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When you're doing deliveries
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when no one's watching you, right?
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And never steal and don't cheat.
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But yeah, he always said
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he may not be smarter than everyone,
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but he will work longer
and harder than anybody.
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He'll be in first thing in
the morning before anybody
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and he'll be the last one out.
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Very old school mentality
and he lived by that.
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He doesn't care how skilled
you are, how smart you are.
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Doesn't matter to him.
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He wants loyal, hardworking
people that will never lie,
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cheat, or steal from him.
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Those are the people
that are still here today
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that are loyal to him.
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And will retire and have
this job for 30, 40 years.
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