Another supplier complained that chefs are becoming timid, sticking only to well-known and mild-tasting fish like halibut, sole, and flounder, because they don’t want to do the experimentation necessary to discover new fish. “Slam the chefs,” he says. “They’re not going far enough afield. Even they’re bored by what they serve. They spend all their time just making new sauces instead of trying to find really good new fish.” David Samuels looks at it a slightly different way: “The really great chefs, they’re like a pastry chef—they just need basic ingredients, like great chocolate, great flour, great sugar. They’re not out there looking for weird new fish.”

The owner of Jewel Bako paid an astounding $42 a pound for big thin reef squid. “They said it’s the greatest squid in Japan, and when I tasted it, it was true.”

Given how tightly knit the fish network is, how, precisely, does a new chef penetrate it and launch a restaurant that offers top-flight fish? It’s certainly possible to get great fish: As Moonen points out, almost anyone can call up a place like Browne Trading and order very good stuff. “It’s just that it’ll cost you an arm and a leg,” he adds. And since you’re the new guy on the block, you won’t be able to charge prices as high as Ripert or Ingber at the Oyster Bar, so your margins will be tighter. You could hunt down your own small boats worldwide that catch superb fish and have them FedEx it to you, but again, the expenses will pound you.

If you can survive long enough, you’ll have a chance to get in tight with the likes of DeMasco, Samuels, Kim, or Wild Edibles, another top wholesaler, though you’ll also have to convince them that you won’t go under in a few months. Having a client whose restaurant abruptly closes is the great risk for all suppliers, because the stakes can be serious: DeMasco has restaurants that can run up a $35,000 tab in a single month. In 2001, chef David Bouley reneged on $10,000 he owed DeMasco; DeMasco sued and won.

“Is it the cost of doing business?” DeMasco says. “Yes. Is it fun? No.” So to survive as a seafood chef, you either have to become so elite that suppliers crave your business, or so economically savvy that you never screw a supplier. “Because every day, I’ve got everyone asking for 100 pounds of cod, and I’ll only have like 20 pounds. So who are you going to give it to? The guys who pay their bills. Money talks! It always talks.”

Even Ripert says he’s careful to keep his suppliers happy: “You pay your bills, and you don’t bargain too much. Because if we did that every day, they’d be like, ‘Fuck you and go somewhere else!’ So we pay the price, we pay on time. The best fish goes to the one who pays the most.”

If the chefs of New York gobble up the truly outstanding fish every day, what’s left for consumers? Are we doomed to get only their scraps, the second-tier fish? Many experts say that’s the case. “You can’t get fish as good as a chef. There’s very few channels for that to come to you,” says Davis of the Beard Foundation.

The exceptions, however, are the fish stores that are also distributors, such as Wild Edibles or Citarella. These organizations buy fish for restaurants, so they have direct access to the fish markets and hunt the top cuts for elite chefs. But they also have stores serving high-end customers who are willing to pay extreme amounts, as much as or even more than a top chef. They’ve got dual loyalties you can exploit.

“In New York, you got a $5 million apartment on top of a $10 million apartment with a $20 million penthouse on top of that. Where else are you going to find that density of affluent people? So the stores have a fighting chance in Manhattan to offer great fish,” says Jonathan Meyer, an owner of Wild Edibles, when I visit him at his Bleecker Street store, where enormous wolf fish and snappers lie glistening on a bed of ice in the window.

Granted, the economics of fish still favor the chefs: They’re buying in bulk and they’re buying regularly, so they’re the first in mind when a superb Coho salmon comes into the store. Walk-in customers who wish to get their hands on the good stuff, Meyer says, are advised to cultivate their own relationships. Shop regularly, and instead of demanding a particular cut of fish—which may or may not be in season—do what the chefs do: Simply ask, “What’s fresh?” and go with that. Indeed, fighting the seasons can doom you to paying far too much for merchandise. “Customers say, ‘I have a dinner planned for next Thursday, and I’ll need a dozen soft-shell crabs,’ ” says Meyer. “And it’s the middle of the winter and soft-shell crabs are like $8 apiece. So it’s $100 for Mrs. Simpson just for her appetizer, and it’s a problem at the cash register.”