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The fisher king
Legal Sea Foods president Roger Berkowitz has spent decades in the business of putting fish on people’s plates. Just don’t ask him to take one off a hook.
BY TAMARA WIEDER

IF YOU HAVEN’T heard the tag line "If it isn’t fresh, it isn’t Legal," chances are you don’t own a television. For decades, that’s been the oft-publicized motto of Legal Sea Foods, begun by Harry Berkowitz as Legal Cash Market, in Inman Square, in 1904. One hundred years later, Legal is a bona fide seafood empire, with 12 restaurants in Massachusetts and 17 others on the East Coast. There’ve been accolades from the likes of the Today show, Bon Appétit magazine, and Zagat Survey. And Legal’s clam chowder has been served at every presidential inauguration since 1981.

The man in charge of it all is Harry Berkowitz’s grandson Roger, who took control of the company in 1992 after more than 30 years in the restaurant and fish business.

Q: You’ve been involved with Legal pretty much your whole life, haven’t you?

A: Yeah, it’s a good thing. Probably since the age of eight.

Q: Was there ever any question that you’d stay in this business? Was there anything else you wanted to do?

A: I went to school for broadcast journalism and had done some radio and TV work, and thought maybe that I would pursue that. When I finished school, I wasn’t sure exactly — I didn’t want to go to graduate school at that point; I just wanted to take some time and think, what direction do I want to go in? Our original restaurant at the time had been in operation for a few years, and so the opportunity came up to spend a couple of years just doing that until I figured out what I wanted to do. And it has always been my experience, anyone who’s ever grown up in the food business, you kind of end up migrating there. It kind of gets in your blood. So after two years I was literally hooked on it.

Q: Do you remember the first piece of fish you ever ate?

A: Yeah, it was probably something I spit out. My father had, at the time, just a fish market, and he’d bring home a great piece of haddock, and my mother had this unbelievable recipe: she’d put it on a piece of aluminum foil, pour milk over the top, and burn it. And I could not eat broiled fish until I was 18.

Q: What’s a typical day like for you?

A: I’m one of those people who really doesn’t like routine and likes a lot of different and varied things going on. So a week can vary from seven or eight o’clock mornings to nine o’clock mornings; I can finish at eight, or I can finish at midnight. A good day for me is when there’s a multitude of things going on, on a whole variety of different subjects: it can be real estate, it can be personnel, it can be testing new food, it can be working on strategy issues. The more I have in a given day, the more energized I become. I’m one of those people who have a short attention span.

Q: Boston has a growing number of seafood restaurants, including some of the big chains. Is that a trend that worries you, or do you view it as healthy competition?

A: I have two thoughts. It’s only worrisome in that there’s only X amount of quality fish out there, so as long as I’m getting my share of quality fish, I’m fine. Competition, I think, is always healthy. Competition motivates you to do better. In the absence of competition, even though you like to feel you’re driven — it just keeps you that much sharper. I’d say competition is a necessary evil.

The kind of quality we look for, I don’t think there’s a great deal of competition for. So what we’ve got to continue to do is differentiate ourselves in terms of how we sell it.

Q: Talk to me about some of the recent diet trends, like Atkins and the South Beach diet. How have they affected Legal?

A: The reality is, I’m very fortunate, because I think seafood is the healthiest of all protein, and you need protein in order to sustain yourself. More and more studies come out from the schools of public health talking about the benefits of it. I’ve never seen any diet exclude seafood. We’re lucky in that regard. I suppose if I was just in the bread business, I’d have cause to worry right now.

Q: Some local restaurants are touting line-caught fish. What are your thoughts on that?

A: Line-caught essentially is a day-boat product, and it’s really very good; it’s what we aim to get. It’s part of our normal repertoire in terms of what we serve. It’s kind of a sexy way of marketing it. You’ve got to make sure: do they truly know it’s line-caught? Do they know the boats it comes off of? Because oftentimes, a lot of restaurants are buying from a distributor that’ll tell them that, but do they actually know? In our case, we deal directly with the fishermen. In theory, line-caught is a superior fish, because it’s taken up one at a time. If you’re eating in a reputable restaurant and it says "line-caught," chances are that it is, particularly if you’re paying a high price for it.

 

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Issue Date: September 3 - 9, 2004
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