Liwei Liao: Fishmonger flipping the script

Your favorite restaurant’s fish with the buttery texture and pronounced taste might not be fresh — and that’s by design. It’s sold through his Sherman Oaks market, the Joint Seafood, as well as a rapidly expanding wholesale roster that includes some of the world’s most prestigious chefs and restaurants, challenging the perception of how fish is processed and served, helping to eliminate food waste and spreading the gospel of Liao: “Fresh is boring.” Discover the changemakers who are shaping every cultural corner of Los Angeles. Local chain Granville recently began serving his aged branzino across its five locations, and Liao occasionally supplements the fish at Michael Cimarusti’s two-Michelin-starred Providence, which now operates its own dry-aging fridges on-site. Spec Fisheries, Liao’s new high-volume production center in Vernon, is slated to open this fall; large aging chambers, as opposed to the Joint’s smaller refrigerators, should help process roughly 30,000 pounds of fish each week, compared with the 4,000 to 6,000 pounds that Liao currently processes a week. The fast-casual sushi counter serves his repurposed, dry-aged “off cuts” — high-quality trim — as temaki and with miso bone-broth soup in Culver City’s Citizen Public Market food hall, as well as at the Joint.