In a rare bright spot for the fish trade, retail sales have set records, and consumers are trying species that even restaurants shy away from.
In 1963, on their way home from the hospital after he was born, Louis Rozzo’s parents stopped by a building on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, where the family ran a wholesale seafood business, to weigh him in a scallop scale. This March, when virtually every restaurant, club and hotel that bought seafood from him closed and his firm’s income dried up in a matter of days, Mr. Rozzo went back to where it all began.
The F. Rozzo & Sons building was still in the family. Mr. Rozzo converted the ground floor into a makeshift store where he sells clams, scallops, sea bass and American red snapper to people who are suddenly cooking at home a lot more than they used to…