2 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Ferry Building just got a new seafood spot from a treasured S.F. restaurant
A much-anticipated seafood market and restaurant from San Francisco's famed Nopa has quietly opened.
On Tuesday morning, the glass case at Nopa Fish at San Francisco's Ferry Building was stocked with pristine, almost exclusively California seafood: Miyagi oysters from Tomales Bay, Monterey Bay squid, San Francisco halibut, even bluefin tuna caught near the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California.
Curious customers ogled the fish case and ordered from the casual, seafood-centric menu created by chef-owner Laurence Jossel, who opened Nopa Fish with partner Holly Rhodes and fishmonger Joe Conte, long a seafood supplier to the city's top restaurants through his now-shuttered business Water2Table.
Even in locavore-obsessed San Francisco, it's rare, Conte said, to have a seafood market so intensely focused on local rather than conventional seafood. It's more expensive and takes more work, like meeting small hook-and-line fishermen unloading at the docks at midnight.
Customers can buy fish by the pound, or sample it in dishes like shrimp arancini ($12), fried rockfish sandwich ($19) and a Bay shrimp and egg salad sandwich ($16). Jossel wanted to create unconventional twists on traditional seafood staples, like adding Moroccan flavors to fish and chips ($24). The wild local rockfish gets ras el hanout seasoning in the batter mix and is served with harissa-spiked aioli and cumin-spiced fries. Here, a classic tuna melt is made with wild albacore cold-smoked in house and served like a Reuben with Russian dressing and sauerkraut ($18).
Jossel convinced Acme Bread, a neighboring Ferry Building tenant, to develop Japanese milk bread whose texture is 'like biting through a cloud,' he said. Slices are used for the shrimp-egg salad sandwich (served open face with dill pickles), while the rockfish sandwich comes on a milk bread hot dog bun (more compact for on-the-go eating, Jossel said).
The priciest dish on the menu is a chirashi bowl ($25), with an ever-changing selection of whatever is best in the fish case — on Tuesday, kanpachi, halibut and tuna — served over single origin Luna Koshihikari rice grown in the Sacramento Valley. It's topped with market greens, ginger, pickled green beans, avocado and a jammy sous-vide egg.
Several Nopa hits made their way over to the new business, including hand-cut fries and latkes, the latter topped with house-smoked McFarland Springs trout. Eventually, a grab-and-go fridge will be stocked with salads and pints of Nopa's popular beet hummus.
Nopa Fish is casual, built for quick meals for lunchtime workers and commuters. Diners order at a counter and can sit at two long wooden communal tables. A fridge is filled with beer, wine, cider and nonalcoholic drinks. Oceanic touches decorate the space, including 100 ceramic fish made by Jossel and Rhodes' 16-year-old daughter hanging on the walls; seafood cookbooks on shelves; and a counter covered with deep-blue tiles handmade by Outer Sunset artist Georgia Hodges.
The restaurant will be initially open through this Friday, June 13, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., as well as Monday, June 16, and start regular service June 17.
Michele Meany, a broker for the Ferry Building, became a fan of Water2Table's home deliveries during the pandemic, and pestered Conte to take over the former San Francisco Fish Company space at the landmark until he agreed. He eventually sought out Jossel, whom he had known for years from work in the restaurant industry, as a chef-partner. (Water2Table also briefly operated Mission District seafood restaurant Ancora.) Conte brings decades of fishermen connections; on Tuesday, he was gearing up for a fresh catch of rock cod, petrale and sand dabs from Mr. Morgan, a fishing vessel out of Half Moon Bay.
Nopa Fish marks the latest notable arrival at the Ferry Building, which continues to evolve post-pandemic with closures, such as the upcoming departure of Grande Crêperie, and a flurry of new tenants, including forthcoming bakery Parachute and restaurant Arquet from the team behind San Francisco's Michelin-starred Sorrel.
