Fish Market

They have increased the portions and lowered the prices at the Fish Market. They have hired cheerful waiters and waitresses. They have updated the menu. The changes are laudable. Now, if they would concentrate on the basic things . . . how to cook rice, how to make soup, how to grill tuna. On one visit the rice was littered with raisins, a terrible idea. The next time there were no raisins, but the rice was dry, hard and lukewarm. Seafood chowder was a tomato-based soup with bits of too-chewy clams.

Halfway through a recent lunch at the Fish Market, the restaurant's chef, Peter Howell, appeared at our table. A member of the staff had issued a critic alert, and Howell had responded by letting us know that we'd been spotted. Such candor is unusual and much appreciated. The same straightforward style seems reflected in the restaurant's food since Howell took over last summer. Each of his new menus has incorporated a few old Fish Market favorites but, for the most part, the dishes are new and pleasantly uncomplicated, the portions ample and the prices scaled down.

Leonard Christopher Jr., a fish-store handyman, yesterday was found guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of a Frankford woman in an alley behind the fish market where he worked. "I was railroaded," Christopher, 38, blurted as he was escorted in handcuffs by sheriffs' deputies through a City Hall corridor after the verdict. "I didn't kill Carol Dowd. I did not even know Carol Dowd. I was implicated by prostitutes, that is, pipers, that the police put up. " A Common Pleas Court jury deliberated eight hours over two days before announcing a verdict on evidence that the prosecution acknowledged was circumstantial.

Three fish-market workers were arrested yesterday and charged in the theft last year of $7.9 million from a Wells Fargo depot, the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Joseph Coffey, 49, Paul "Little Paulie" Mazzarese, 58, and John "Beansie" Campanella, 44, all of New York City, were ordered jailed until a bail hearing Wednesday by U.S. Magistrate Ruth Washington. The robbery took place April 29, 1985, when four masked men surprised Wells Fargo guards after midnight at one of the firm's facilities and took an estimated $7.9 million from the vault.

Food is big business in the 1980s - the ever-growing number of gourmet food shops and takeouts attests to that. And more are on the way. One of the most visible blossomings has been at the Reading Terminal Market, where the newest addition, the Reading Terminal Deli, will open in October. The market recently added a package checking service and curbside pickup. General manager David O'Neill says it is planning home delivery and an improvement program that could have the market air-conditioned and with new restrooms by next summer.

The venerable Fish Market restaurant, 18th and Sansom streets in Center City, recently joined the prix fixe early dinner trend. The particulars: For $11.95 a person, you get a pre-selected first course (soup or salad or appetizer, depending on what chef Peter Howell dreams up), a choice of main course (from three seafood entrees), a pre-selected dessert, and coffee or tea. Menus change weekly. On a recent visit to the restaurant, the meal began with wonderfully chewy rolls from a bakery in South Philly and a light (some might say thin)

Several more blighted Center City properties owned by the late Samuel Rappaport, including the site of the old Fish Market restaurant at 18th and Sansom Streets, might soon change hands. Real estate investor Ralph Heller said yesterday that he and a partner, Leroy Kean, had agreed to purchase the Fish Market building and a row of run- down properties in the 1600 block of Sansom Street. The deal, while not complete, is another indication that Rappaport's estate is acting to erase some of the blight associated with the speculator's vast inventory.

Restaurateur Neil Stein is going back to where it all began for him in Center City - to 122 S. 18th St., the spot just off the corner of 18th and Sansom Streets where the Fish Market, one of downtown's trendier joints, grew during its heyday in the 1980s. Stein says he plans to install a high-end seafood counter in the front of the store, backed by a 50-seat restaurant with an oyster bar. Opening is targeted for June. He'll call it the Fish Market, naturally. Stein cofounded the Fish Market in 1974 at the corner of 18th and Sansom Streets, now a shoe store.

SORRY, CHARLIE - THIS TUNA'S TOPS A tuna has gone for a record $50,160 in the year's first auction at Japan's largest fish market. The price for the 440-pound plump tuna was a record for a whole fish at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, said market spokesman Hiroshi Murano. It was among 4,312 tuna sold in a brisk, 30-minute auction before dawn on Thursday. Tuna is sold by weight, with the price set depending on how fatty the meat is. The tender tuna brought a hefty $114 per pound.

It was late on a rainy Thursday afternoon when Jerome Brown's forest green Corvette wheeled off South Broad Street onto quiet Hale Avenue. Brown owned eight others cars, but none quite like his beloved Corvette - so low-slung, sleek, fast, powerful. It cranked from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.3 seconds. Its fat tires were rated safe at speeds almost three times the legal limit. Augusta Wesley, his 12-year-old nephew, sat beside his massive uncle in the soft tan-leather contours of the bucket seat.

To say the region is in a brewpub frenzy is no understatement. Iron Hill just opened its ninth location, in Chestnut Hill, and is planning a 10th in South Jersey in 2013. In Ambler, Forest & Main Brewing Co. is due to open toward the end of the month. A bit further off is Ardmore's Tired Hands Brewing Co. Opening last month: Bill Mangan's third McKenzie Brew House , a bright, tasteful transformation of the Charlie Brown's Steakhouse in Valley Fair Shopping Center off Route 202 (324 W. Swedesford Rd., Berwyn, 610-407-4300)

The Lenten tradition of meatless meals and the warm-weather appeal of eating lighter makes fish popular fare as the seasons change. Spring also brings Passover seder dinners with gefilte fish, which ambitious home cooks make using fresh-ground whitefish, pike, and carp. But buying fish is often a challenge. It was true in my days as a chef, but it is even more perplexing as a home cook without the great wholesale sources available to the restaurant trade. For a fine kettle of the freshest fish at the best price, make friends with a dedicated fishmonger at a market that moves a lot of fish.

David Holahan is a freelance writer from East Haddam, Conn. I always felt uneasy driving back from the fish market with my grandmother while that heavy-duty foil-lined bag full of squiggling, doomed lobsters was at my feet. This was a little too close to the food chain for my suburban taste. Back at the beach cottage, she would place the animated bag in the middle of the dining room table while she unloaded the other groceries. Each time I checked, the congregation had moved a little closer to the edge.

A CO-WORKER of mine buys the Daily News, which I occasionally read. But I've stopped because, other than sports, it is depressing, exploitative and disturbing. I realize that "bad" news may sell papers (or so it's thought). But I think that adding "good" news or even publishing a separate paper focusing on positive news will not only be a welcome change to your current readers, but will also entice readers like me to buy it. I am not saying the positive articles need to be boring or sappy, but I know that for every person who has committed a horrid crime, there are many more that are heroes.

NEIL Stein actually broke into the restaurant business before 1973. He was part owner of a restaurant at Cedarbrook Hill Apartments called Mimi Says in the late '60s. His partner was Ron Dushoff, whose father, David, was part owner of the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill. My grandfather was the bandleader at the Latin for many years. Neil's dad owned a grocery store on Wadsworth Avenue in Mt. Airy called the Fish Market. Neil's choice of a name for his first restaurant in Center City was likely no coincidence.

Looking forward to a big seafood dinner at a Jersey resort this summer? What you find on the menu may surprise you. One thing that's missing: Chilean sea bass. This popular fish, once prevalent in Antarctic waters, has recently shown signs of depletion. In the past few months, the endangered fish has virtually disappeared from restaurant menus. Jersey shore eateries readying for another summer tourist season have found an array of replacements. Some go for other cold-water fish like wild Alaskan salmon or Canadian halibut.

It rained. And then it rained some more. In almost biblical proportions - nearly 40 days - precipitation has poured down upon the Jersey Shore this summer. But as Labor Day signals the time when merchants, municipal officials and others begin taking an accounting of all things countable, from sodas sold to beach badges bought, it is generally becoming clear that it wasn't such a bad summer after all in a place where the weather rules everything. "If it hadn't rained so much, it would have certainly been a banner year," said Mike Sulish, who owns the Boulevard Cafe, a fish market and restaurant in Surf City on Long Beach Island.

It's 5:20 p.m. on a damp Sunday and I'm sitting on a bench outside Dmitri's, at 795 S. 3rd St., trying to make peace with a prospective 50-minute wait. Had I arrived 5, maybe 10 minutes earlier, I might have beat the 5 o'clock opening-door rush. Now the claustrophobic dining room is packed, chatter is accelerating and I can almost feed off the energy inside the no-frills fish house, a regular on national "best of" lists, most recently on Gourmet magazine's "America's Top Tables" as the city's top moderately priced restaurant.

It was wedding day in Barnegat Light, a fact that was obvious from the breakfast crowd at Mustache Bill's Diner. At one end of the room sat the bride and her party. At the other sat the groom and his crew. Forget the superstition of wedding-day seclusion. As rituals go in this Shore town, there could be no event more fortuitous than breakfast at Mustache Bill's. Just listen to the groom order: "I'd like my scrapple extra crisp. " That's confidence for your wedding day. Bill's is a stainless deco fixture amidst a landscape of new-growth homes, a real '50s diner that reliably ticks along like an old Bulova watch strapped to the prosperous northern wrist of Long Beach Island.

It's hard to miss the neon. The colorful signs guide us to: Fruits and Vegetables Bakery A Taste of Philly Poultry Fish Market Mrs. G's Salads It is the upside of a spurt of store openings and closings in the highly competitive Philadelphia supermarket scene. It also is the extent of the glitz. In fact, says Shop Rite franchise owner William Glazier, the neon department signs are just one more practical and consumer-friendly element in the Port Richmond store he designed "from the ground up. " At 66,000 square feet, the store vies with Acme's Bustleton and Red Lion site as the largest city market, about 15 percent bigger than the standard among top chains.