Seafood fans not left high and dry for a good catch

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Fresh fish in the desert. Believe it or not, the concept was once as much an oxymoron as it sounds, back before that last million of you decided to populate our Vegas oasis. There was a time when the only oceanic item on any menu was the jumbo shrimp cocktail, and even then you were taking your life into your own hands.

"I would say the supply of fresh seafood has increased by 60 percent in the last 20 years," said Fred Bielek, who has run the kitchen at Michael's in the Barbary Coast as executive chef for 23 years. "There's just more demand for it now. Back then, restaurants would lean more toward the steakhouse variety. We didn't have the volume."

Fortunately for fish aficionados, times have changed. As hotel-casinos exploded into full-fledged resorts, food and beverage directors realized tourists want more surf with their turf and the upscale restaurant boom got booming.

Today, a bounty of restaurants on or near the Strip -- Aquaknox at The Venetian, Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare at Wynn Las Vegas, Buzio's at Rio and restaurant rm at Mandalay Bay, just to name a few -- as well as familiar names in the neighborhood -- Roy's, King's Fish House at The District at Green Valley Ranch -- are serving up piscatorial pleasures plucked from the seas within the last 24 hours.

"The only difference between here and (coastal cities) is that you can't walk down to the fish markets and see what they have today," said Ben Jenkins, executive chef at Seablue inside the MGM Grand. Other than that, same fish, just as fresh.

Jenkins first came to town in 1998 to help chef Michael Mina open Aqua at the Bellagio, a restaurant generally considered to be the turning point in Vegas seafood quality. Now it goes by the name of Michael Mina, the well-known chef also behind Seablue and Nobhill.

Not only does the fish get to Vegas as fast as possible, but it's flown in from all over the world.

"We use about 15 different purveyors," Jenkins said. "We serve the staples like halibut and salmon, but people like that we have more exotic choices like the rouget, the loup de mer, the barramundi." Seablue opened in 2003 as a Mediterranean-influenced restaurant, so that would explain the fish you never heard of. "Sometimes we'll get a customer that won't believe we just got the fish in that morning and they want to see it, so we show them."

Unfortunately, you still have to pay for freshness. Just because there are tons of upscale restaurants bringing in and selling tons of fresh fish doesn't mean the fried filet of whatever that is at Long John Silver's just got a whole lot tastier.

And for the record, for all you annual Best of Las Vegas voters who insist on putting Red Lobster in the No. 1 seafood spot, please understand that joints like that usually get fish three times a week, and around half of it is frozen.

While we may not have a true fish market in town, we're getting closer. Most supermarkets receive seafood twice a week, but Whole Foods Markets (at 8855 W. Charleston Blvd., or 100 S. Green Valley Parkway in Henderson) gets straight-from-the-sea goodies six days a week, and rarely has the stuff seen the deep freeze.

It may be a little more expensive than that box of fish sticks in your freezer, but it will be worth it.

Brock Radke's food column appears twice monthly. Contact him at bradke@viewnews.com.