Where can I get Green Fish and Pork Belly Ham, Sam I Am. At Sam's Seafood Market! Thank you, thank you, Sam I Am.
Don't worry. This isn't a children's story with hidden negative messages and innuendos.
Sam's Seafood Market must be the biggest stall inside Kekaulike Market in Chinatown. It's in the center portion on the right side of the entrance. All three sides offer a variety of seafood as well as raw meat! So it's not just a seafood market. You can find pork belly, chicken belly, pork tongue, beef tendon, whole chicken, and etc. There's also packaged seafood items such as Fish Tofu, fish balls, and the like.
It's run by a very friendly couple. Every time I come by just to take a look, they'll always come by and ask if I need any help and inform of what's fresh, what just arrived, and etc. It's hard to not buy something here, but when in Chinatown, you always need to check and double check the freshness and prices from other stalls.
The prices here are always kept at exactly the same as other stalls. But you'll never find anything that's better priced than other places.
I normally purchase chicken feet from here as they often have more plump pieces, and they also defrost everything, so you can choose the pieces yourself. I recently purchased a lean pork belly for the meat to make dumplings. It looked nice and smelled fine as it was still mostly frozen, but after defrosting and mincing, there was a slight off putting smell which meant it's not that fresh.
Overall, Sam's Seafood Market is a decent one stop shop to get your meats and seafood. Customer service is great. Prices are on par. Quality can be hit or miss. For some items, it's nice they defrost it so you can choose the good ones and the amount. However, it's obvious a lot of the meats and seafood are all defrosted and then frozen again for the items that didn't sell that day. It's okay to do that, as I'm sure everybody does that, but the quality goes down each cycle.
All about timing to get the good ones! And Sam's usually have the good ones at any time of day. read more