Fish King, 722 N. Glendale Ave., Glendale; (818) 244-2161 and (213) 425-3553. Open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Second location: 19550 Tarzana Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 345-1205. Open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Saturday.
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In the cool gray light of early morning, the wholesale seafood markets are in full swing, jammed with rumbling trucks and rivers of melting ice. Inside a cavernous building that looms like an airplane hangar between Central and Alameda streets, men wearing black rubber aprons and sturdy galoshes unpack crates of iced fresh fish. In the middle of it all Hank Kagawa inspects Fiji Island albacore to make sure it's up to his standards and hand-picks the choicest extra-large Dungeness crabs for his seafood business, Fish King.
Yesterday, someone from the "Days of Our Lives" show called Kagawa's Burbank wholesale plant to request 25 perfect-looking red rockfish for a TV shoot. So today Kagawa scrutinizes the lot to be sure the eyes are bright and the skin well-colored. He goes over an order of fresh abalone and another of live crayfish for a restaurant client; he'll have to send out a truck for it later, he learns.
Slight and still youthful-looking in his mid-60s, Kagawa is a hands-on kind of guy. Whether he's seeking out a new oyster source or developing recipes for the take-out food at his two retail shops, he oversees just about every aspect of his retail and wholesale fish and poultry business with the help of his wife and son Jon.
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But Kagawa didn't start out to be a fishmonger. Working his way through a commercial art program at Los Angeles Community College, he had a job at Fish King--"a two-man operation and me," as he puts it. "I was the gofer, doing a little of everything--deliveries, filleting fish, you name it."
When Fish King's owner decided to concentrate on his frozen shrimp business, Kagawa and an uncle bought him out. Since then the tiny Glendale storefront has expanded into three adjoining stores. "The cafe and take-out part used to be a laundromat," he says. Fish King also has its own fish preparation plant and a new store in Tarzana.
Kagawa claims good business instincts have always been a family trait. At the turn of the century his grandfather immigrated to Hawaii from Japan. A generation later, his son decided he could do better than working in the pineapple fields, and came to California. In short order he was trucking produce to the Central Market from the Palos Verdes Peninsula where, until recent years, there were small Japanese-run strawberry and vegetable farms. Later he opened a grocery store. "He felt he had really made it when he drove up in his new Buick and offered to take me for a ride," Kagawa remembers.
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Kagawa, Sr. lost that Buick, his trucking business and the market when the family was interned during World War II, but he still had the entrepreneurial spirit, Kagawa says. After the war he managed to scrape together the wherewithal to open a small market in Downtown's Little Tokyo.
Kagawa got his most memorable lesson in dealing with customers from his father in an incident he says he remembers as though it happened yesterday. The new store required tons of work and long hours from the family. One day, Kagawa recalls, a guy came in with a nearly empty carton of milk, saying it was bad and asking for his money back. "I asked him, 'If it's so bad, how come you drank so much?' " Kagawa remembers. "My father hustled me into the back, apologized and refunded the man's money. Later he was really fuming and gave me a dressing down. He told me, 'It's good business when all your customers are satisfied.' "
Kagawa developed prepared foods with the same instincts that made the rest of the business so successful. He didn't want to waste the odds and ends of fish that had been cut into portions for his restaurant trade. "It was wonderful fish," he says, "but odd shapes and such, so we started to sell it cooked." He also noticed that many people didn't know how to handle or cook fish, so he added a fish-cooking service. Now prepared foods represent about a third of Fish King's retail trade.
One of Fish King's first prepared foods was its now-famous "crunch fish"--deep-fried and lightly breaded. It's still so popular people will wait in line for it. But tastes have changed and now there are char-grilled fish, as well as fish tacos and several prepared pastas and salads and sushi and sashimi.
FISH IN THE ROUND
Ichthyophiles of a purist bent insist on buying their fish unfilleted; they like the way its uncut skin seals in the freshness. But many cooks are intimidated when faced with something that looks as if it just swam ashore. The line-up of skilled countermen at Fish King's retail stores solves this problem; they can turn any seagoing creature into a form suitable for the dinner plate.
