LAGuide
11 Great LA Seafood Markets For Pick-Up & Delivery
photo credit: Jakob Layman
There are a plenty of benefits to living in a city with almost 75 miles of coastline - plenty of beach space, ocean views on almost every hike, and the chance that you might see Adam Sandler surfing on a random Tuesday. Also: So much fresh seafood.
And even though LA restaurants have re-opened for dine-in service, we understand if you’re still not ready to return to a dining room - so why not pick something up from one of these 11 seafood markets all around the city?
The Spots
It’s hard to miss Alex Fish Market’s electric-blue building on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Exposition Park, but what happens inside that building is just as eye-opening. They’re known for their affordable dinner platters - get the fantastic fried catfish and fried shrimp plate - but you can also get fresh fish by the pound, like orange roughy, tilapia, sole, and trout. They’ll also cook anything you order at no charge.
A great Inglewood seafood market, Big Fish has a solid selection of fresh fish by the pound, plus a bunch of pre-made dinners. This strip mall spot just off Crenshaw Blvd. has great prices on all kinds of staples - salmon, snapper, cod, sand dabs, jumbo prawns, and more. They’ll also fry or grill anything you order at no extra cost.
If you know one thing about Dudley Market, it’s probably that they have their own fishing boat. And even though they’ve re-opened for dine-in, they’ve still got a great selection of whole and filleted fish for sale. It varies based on what they pulled out of the ocean that day, but might include rockfish, red snapper, ling cod, or bluefin tuna. If you’re dining in, order some oysters and the fish and chips.
It’s all in the name at Family Fish Market, the family-run seafood spot in Carson. They’re probably best known for their excellent Louisiana-style fish fries, but you can get great prices on fresh seafood here, too. They’ve got catfish, tilapia, and red snapper, all for under $10. And even if you’re just picking up fish to cook at home, we highly recommend coming back for their fried shrimp and hush puppies sometime very soon.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Fish King is a tremendous Glendale market with a massive supply of fresh and frozen fish, crustaceans, and shellfish. You can check their website for the day’s selection, but they’ve usually got around 75 options at their multi-room seafood counter, including a few different kinds of sushi-grade fish, six or seven different oysters, and tons of wild, Pacific-caught fillets. They also have prepared foods, if you don’t feel like cooking - any of the fried fish plates are excellent, as is the Hawaiian-style poke.
One of our favorite new restaurants of 2020, Found Oyster remains closed for dine-in, but they’ve converted to a Wednesday/Saturday seafood market. From yellowfin, swordfish, and halibut fillets to Maine littlenecks, lobsters, and mussels, they’ve got you covered. They are also - literally - the only place in town where you can buy Little Namskaket oysters, the tiny, salty bivalves from the owner’s family farm on Cape Cod. Order ahead via their website for pick-up.
Holbox is one of our favorite go-tos for high-end Mexican seafood, so when they started doubling as a seafood market in May, we knew they’d have great fish, too. They’ve kept it up since re-opening for dine-in service - their takeout selection changes by the week, but you can expect a couple different kinds of scallops, sushi-grade kanpachi, and sushi-grade whole striped bass. Order on their site.
If you’re looking for sushi-grade fish, look no further than Sushi I-Naba. This tiny Manhattan Beach spot is running “Mini Toyosu Fish Market,” named for Tokyo’s famed seafood market where the chef sources his fish. That means bluefin fatty tuna, boxes of Hokkaido uni, ocean trout, and firefly squid. Call for the daily selection - (310) 545-3345.
The Downtown LA sibling of Santa Monica Seafood, LA Fish Company focuses on sushi-grade fish and shellfish. You can get seafood imported from Japan, such as tai snapper, aji, kanpachi, and hamachi, along with Hokkaido scallops and uni, plus local Santa Barbara spiny lobsters, rock cod, and sablefish.
Quality Seafood might have the widest selection of seafood in Los Angeles. This multilevel spot occupies what feels like six miles of the Redondo Beach Pier (it’s probably more like a block). They carry local options like line-caught rock cod, snapper, and grouper, along with a ton of much harder-to-find options like steamers, live blue crab, and red sea urchin. You can order online, or just do what we do and wander around the market without a plan until something catches your eye.
Santa Monica Seafood might distribute fish to restaurants around the country, but their shop on Wilshire still feels like a local fish market. They have a huge deli case full of both wild and farm-raised fish and seafood - like Scottish salmon, Alaskan king crab, wild-caught opah, and Chilean sea bass - and their cafe also has some great prepared options, especially the cioppino.
