Sometimes this job is an excellent opportunity to live vicariously. Recently, I spent a couple of nights (or mornings, depending on how you live) at the New Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx with Joe Catalano, a fish buyer for Eli Zabar and for the B.R. Guest restaurant group (Aqua Grill, Blue Fin, Fiamma, Dos Caminos, etc.).

Catalano's job is to represent those places, and pick out the best fish there is for them in person, rather than letting the purveyor send whatever he wants. For restaurants, this is a fairly recent process and not a widely-filled position, but one that certainly benefits the customer.

Most buyers and sellers I talked to agree that the new facility is infinitely better for the fish than the old one at South Street Seaport, where the product was exposed to the elements -- which in summertime threatened freshness constantly. The new space is enclosed, brightly lit, and just cold enough to see your breath. But still, many of the guys who have worked the market for a long time miss the old digs. A truck driver, puffing on a cigar in the parking lot at 5AM, asked me what I thought of the market, and I said it was pretty cool. "It's not cool," he snapped back. "The old place was cool."