You do not need a fish market for this. I will show you what to pull out of a regular grocery case and a warehouse freezer wall, what it should cost you, and how to cook it so nobody at the table asks where the salmon went.
Three hundred and twenty five entries out of thirty eight years on the wet side of the glass, in seven volumes and five hundred and thirty four pages: what to buy, what the label is actually saying, how to cut it, how to cook it, and what to do with the two thirds of the animal that usually goes in a bin. Four printable field tools come with them.
I am Sal Rizzo. I started at seventeen, hosing down a floor at four in the morning in a shop that sold to restaurants before it sold to anybody's mother. The old man who owned it would not let me touch a knife for a year. He put me on the ice.
By the end I was breaking two hundred pounds a day by hand and I knew half the neighborhood by what they ordered on a Friday. I watched the price of a salmon fillet go from four dollars a pound to nineteen, and not one thing about the fish changed in that time.
What changed is the story the case tells you. I know it changed, because I am one of the people who arranged the case.
Everything in these books is what I would have told you across the counter if the line behind you was not eleven people long.
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Walk to the meat counter and read what is written over it. Marbled. Rich. Seared. Now walk fifty feet to my side and read mine.
$17.99 a pound
$12.99 a pound
Every word pointed at you on my side is the exact opposite of the words on theirs, and it has been that way on purpose for about forty years. So think about what that does to the ocean.
The ocean is full of animals that are fatty and dense and chewy and made to be cooked over fire. Plenty of them are swimming in American water right now. But they do not fit the story the counter is telling, and a fish that does not fit the story never gets a spot in the case, and a fish that never gets a spot in the case never develops a price.
So the meaty half of the ocean sits in the freezer aisle, or in the back, at commodity money. Three ninety nine. Seven ninety nine for the expensive one.
Meanwhile you are paying eighteen dollars a pound for fat, char and chew, and you think that is what fat, char and chew cost.
This is the trip the fillet in the case took to get to you. The bag in the freezer wall, forty feet away, was sealed two hours after it came out of the water.
"Fresh" is not a claim about time. It is a claim about temperature — that the fish was never brought below a certain point. It says nothing at all about what day it came out of the water, and I argued about that word with more managers than any other in thirty eight years.
Most of what sits in a case on a Tuesday was frozen and thawed in a back room that morning. That is normal. That is fine. But it means it is not fresher than the frozen one for half the money forty feet away — and you are paying the difference for a word.
Take a $19.99 a pound "fresh" salmon fillet and pull it apart line by line. This is the arithmetic the case is built to keep you from doing.
Every book in this set is built on the same question, because it is the only question that ever mattered on my side of the glass: what exactly, of the money in your hand, is buying you food?
Illustrative breakdown of a real case price, worked in full in the front of the main book so you can run it on your own store's numbers.
Not "good for the money." Not "a decent substitute." Each one beats the expensive fish at one specific thing, and the chart names the thing out loud.
| What you buy now | Price | What I buy | Price | What it beats it at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ribeye steak | $17.99 | Whole squid, frozen | $3.49 | Char per dollar. Nothing on earth takes a black edge faster. |
| Ribeye steak | $17.99 | Fish collars | $3.99 | Fat, bone and char, eaten with your hands. Most stores throw them out. |
| King crab legs | $39.99 | Monkfish tail | $8.99 | No shell, no ice, no size premium. Nine dollars buys nine dollars of food. |
| King crab legs | $39.99 | Langostino tails | $9.99 | Already cooked, already picked. Ninety seconds in warm butter. |
| Atlantic salmon | $12.99 | Whole fish, head on | $2.99 | Three seconds of looking tells you more than any fillet ever can. |
| Ahi tuna steak | $21.99 | The loin, uncut | $4.49 | Same animal. You are paying for somebody's knife. |
| Sea scallops | $24.99 | Dry-packed, by weight | $18.99 | The wet ones are up to a quarter water. You pay for it, then it steams. |
| Chilean sea bass | $32.99 | Barramundi, frozen | $9.99 | Same fat, same forgiveness in a pan, a third of the money. |
Eight of the forty. Prices are ones I have actually paid in the last few months, in a regular store, a warehouse store, or a market with a counter in the back. A price you cannot find is not a price — it is a story.
That is not my opinion and it is not a scandal I am breaking. It is the ordinary condition of the business, and every person behind a counter knows it.
Red snapper that is not snapper. Grouper that is not grouper. The word wild on a salmon in a month when nothing wild is being caught. Sushi grade, which is not a grade and is not issued by anybody. Color added, printed small, on flesh that would otherwise be grey. Scallops sold at a quarter of their weight in soaked water.
The Seafood Label Decoder is twenty two words and nine species, one page each: what the word legally means, what it is doing on that sticker, and the one question that settles it at the counter.
All of it downloads at once, PDF and EPUB both. Nothing ships and there is no account to make.
40 entries · 72 pages
How to read a case and what the words on it mean. The six tells that work on a fish whose name you do not know, the ten words that carry the whole pricing, and the four questions that get an honest answer.
80 species · 156 pages
The atlas. Eighty animals nobody bid the price up on, each with what it costs, where it actually sits in the store, the one thing it beats the expensive fish at, and the form of it you should not buy at any price.
45 entries · 72 pages
One knife, one board, one pan. Twelve pages on the tool you already own, thirteen cuts in teaching order, and twenty laws of heat — written as what the animal is doing, not as recipes.
35 entries · 57 pages
The freezer wall item by item, the service case item by item, and the arithmetic of the warehouse. Including the two entries that tell you when the warehouse is the wrong building.
55 entries · 70 pages
Twenty two words, one page each, with what the word is legally allowed to claim. Twenty one species sold under a name that is not theirs. And the canned aisle, with a six second test that needs no brand names.
40 entries · 61 pages
The four things everybody already buys at the highest price per pound in the department, and how not to get robbed on them. Shrimp, scallops and bivalves, crab and lobster, and the odd ones.
30 entries · 46 pages
The head, the frame, the collar, the roe, the liver and the skin — food you already paid for. Then stock, cure and smoke, and the freezer chapter that decides how long any of it keeps.
Big type, no paragraphs, and a dashed line to cut on. These live on the inside of a cabinet door or folded in a coat pocket at the store.
40 swaps · 2 pages
Forty expensive fish, the cheap one that beats each, and the one thing it beats it at. Folds into a pocket.
84 species · 2 pages
What eighty four species should cost a pound, with a blank column to write your own store’s price in.
14 cards · 4 pages
Fourteen printable cards. Five for your pocket at the store, four for inside a cabinet door by the stove.
12 cuts · 14 dinners
One ten pound fish cut twelve ways, and the fourteen dinners that come out of it for $2.85 each.
I am not asking you to take the number on faith. Here is exactly where it comes from, for one household that eats fish most weeks.
That is a household buying fish two or three times a week at the prices in my store this month. The whole calculation is written out in the front of the main book, with blank columns, so you can run it on your own prices before you believe mine.
You are buying Volume One and Volume Two. The other five volumes, the four field tools and every future edition come free with them.
How to read a case and what the words mean. 40 entries, 72 pages.
The atlas. 80 species, 156 pages.
The knife, 13 cuts, and 20 laws of heat. 45 entries, 72 pages.
The freezer wall and the case, item by item. 35 entries, 57 pages.
22 words, 21 names, and the canned aisle. 55 entries, 70 pages.
Shrimp, scallops, crab and lobster. 40 entries, 61 pages.
The parts, the cure, and the freezer. 30 entries, 46 pages.
40 swaps on two printable pages.
What 84 species should cost, with a column for your store.
14 cards for the cabinet door and the coat pocket.
One animal, twelve cuts, fourteen dinners.
Straight to the same inbox, at no charge, forever.
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Thirty days, my word on it.
Read it, cook from it, and if it is not what you hoped, write to me and every dollar comes back. No forms and no awkward questions, and you keep the files either way. I would rather that than have you feel taken.
Already ordered and the books have not turned up? Write to support@salrizzofish.com and I will send them straight over.
Once, through the same checkout the big stores use. I never see your card number, and there is nothing to cancel afterward.
On the very next screen. Phone, tablet or computer, PDF and EPUB both, all seven files at once.
The same link goes to your inbox, so you can open it again any night you cook, or at the store with your phone in one hand.
Eleven files, downloaded the moment you pay. Seven volumes — 325 entries across 534 pages — as PDF and EPUB, plus four printable field tools. Nothing ships. There is no account, no login and no app.
Neither do most of the people who watch the channel, and the books are written that way. The bulk of what I point you at is in a regular grocery store or a warehouse store, most of it in the freezer wall, which is the part of the store I would send my own family to first. There is a short chapter on the counter conversation for when you do have one, and you can skip it.
No. The videos are one idea at a time, and I have to stop when I run out of room. The books are the whole thing in order — every species, every price, every method, cross-referenced so you can open any one of them at the store and find the answer in ten seconds. Some of what is in here I have never said on camera because it does not fit in twenty minutes. Three hundred and twenty five entries is about forty years of Fridays.
A knife, a cutting board and a pan. Every method in the book was written for a home kitchen. I use a filleting knife because I own six of them, but I show you how to do it with the knife already in your drawer, and there is a page on which one to buy if you ever decide you want one.
No. One payment of $27 and it is finished. Future editions come to the same inbox at no charge, which is the only thing you will ever hear from me about it again.
Write to me inside thirty days and every dollar comes back. You keep the files. I do not ask you why.
It has been there the whole time. Nobody ever told you where to look, because the person whose job it is to tell you gets paid on the other number.
$27 once · Instant download, PDF and EPUB · 30-day refund, keep the files