Caught up in sustaining our seafood

In any other chain restaurant, a walk-in cooler is a walk-in cooler. To Sam King, it’s 40 degrees of heaven.

Standing in the frosty, metallic cubicle he calls the Shrine, the chief executive of King’s Seafood Co. shows off the contents like a dad displaying photos of his kids.

On one shelf are boxes of wahoo -- white, delicate and flown in fresh (dated that day) from the Pacific Islands. On another are boxes of salmon just harvested from farms in Chile. Down below are crates of oysters not yet on the half-shell, begging to be pried apart and doused with cocktail sauce.

“Here,” King tells a visitor, pulling the lid off a container of wahoo. “What do you smell?”

Nothing -- the dead giveaway of a fresh fish.

It’s what King likes to call “that ‘just came in’ feel” and it’s a key part of the strategy behind the company that owns the rapidly growing King’s Fish House chain. Other touches include a menu that’s changed twice daily to reflect availability and seasonal offerings such as soft-shell crabs and wild Copper River salmon from Alaska.

But King, whose Costa Mesa-based company also owns the acclaimed Water Grill in downtown L.A. and a handful of other upscale eateries, has more than today’s menu on his mind. He’s eager to talk about the ocean’s dwindling stocks of fish and the implications for the world’s food supply and the future of his business.

“It’s been obvious to all of us who have been in the restaurant business for a long time that there has been an issue with the quantity of fish coming out of the ocean,” he says.

“It has been depleted very, very, very rapidly. And that is scary.”

The United Nations reported last year that the world’s oceans were probably at their upper limit in terms of sustainable seafood production. About three-quarters of the marine species eaten by humans are being over-fished, according to the U.N. report.

Spreading the word about sustainable seafood has become something of a crusade for King, who readily points out that his interest goes well beyond the altruistic.

“Without product,” he says of his company, “we don’t have anything.”

He does more than cite statistics.

A few years back, Jerry Shubel, president of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, was telling King, an aquarium board member, about the threat over-fishing posed to the Chilean sea bass.

“He took it off the menu in all their restaurants even though it was their bestseller,” Shubel recalls.

Since then, King has stopped selling grouper, orange roughy and other endangered species. (He still serves swordfish, which frequently shows up in the “avoid” column of activists’ seafood-watch lists. King says his restaurants feature Pacific swordfish, which is on firmer footing than its Atlantic cousin.)

In partnership with the aquarium and with other seafood suppliers, King helped launch the Sustainable Seafood Forum. The goal is to help people identify seafood procured through responsible fishing operations or environmentally friendly aquaculture techniques.

The effort isn’t without controversy. Aquaculture -- a fancy name for fish farming -- has come in for much of the same criticism as other modern methods of mass food production. King dismisses the criticism as outdated, contending that improved techniques were solving problems associated with aquaculture, such as groundwater pollution.

It’s a self-assured stance typical of King, according to Shubel.

“He’s candid and open and direct,” the aquarium chief says. “If he agrees with you he tells you. If he disagrees with you he tells you that too.”

King, a beefy 53-year-old with a ponytail who played football and wrestled at Millikan High in Long Beach (class of ‘72), has a restaurant industry pedigree. Starting in 1945 with a single King’s coffee shop in Huntington Park, his dad, Mickey, and his uncle Lou built a modest chain of eateries that provided an early training ground for their kids.

“I was very lucky,” he says. “I was able to absorb the business by osmosis just by being around my dad.”

After studying business at USC, King joined with his cousin Jeff King in their first restaurant venture, the 555 East steakhouse in downtown Long Beach, in the early 1980s. The first Fish House opened a dozen years ago and has since grown to 11 locations, mostly in Southern California.

The two cousins control about 60% of the company. As CEO, Sam King is the operational guy while his older cousin serves as chairman.

Unlike many restaurant owners, King doesn’t spend a lot of time complaining about efforts to boost the minimum wage or mandate health insurance for employees.

“They are 100% against anything that’s going to cost them a dime, which to me is the dumbest position in the world,” says King, whose company offers health coverage and a 401(k) plan to its employees.

King expects the company to reel in about $95 million in sales this year. That would be up 20% from 2006, a growth rate that has, not surprisingly, caught the attention of investment bankers trolling for hot prospects.

King isn’t immune to the siren song of Wall Street. He and his board probably will decide this year whether they should go public to raise capital for expansion.

Whichever way the vote goes, King says he isn’t concerned about how his California casual persona will play on the Street.

“They’re less interested in how I look,” he says, “and more interested in what I’m telling them.”

martin.zimmerman@latimes.com

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Hooked

Sam King

Age: 53

Education: Attended USC

Business: Co-founder of King’s Seafood Co. Holdings include 11 King’s Fish House restaurants; the Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles; i Cugini and Ocean Ave. Seafood in Santa Monica; 555 East in Long Beach; Lou & Mickey’s in San Diego

Favorite food: Uni (sea urchin)

Personal: Married with three children. Lives in Coto de Caza in south Orange County. Hobbies include fishing and travel.