Making a bid for the best

The Mercedes SUV pulls into the driveway of our Waikiki Beach hotel at precisely 6 o’clock in the morning. Chef Mavro -- everyone calls him Chef Mavro, including his wife -- opens the door, and my wife and son and I blink the sleep from our eyes and quickly scramble inside.

Chef Mavro -- George Mavarothalassitis, born in Marseilles of Greek parents, now one of the best chefs in Hawaii -- has offered to take us to the daily fish auction in Honolulu. Actually, his wife and partner, Donna Jung, made the offer on his behalf, and with all the talk about the health and taste benefits of wild versus farm-raised fish these days, I accepted immediately; I wanted to take an up close and personal look at the largest collection of wild fish I’m ever likely to see. My family and I are planning to have dinner at Chef Mavro in a couple of nights, so I’m also intrigued by his suggestion that some of these fish could wind up on my dinner plate -- not only in Hawaii but in Los Angeles as well.

Ten minutes later we find ourselves in a chill, damp warehouse in Kewalo Basin. Twenty or 30 fish brokers and buyers are already there. They arrive at 5:30 every morning, big rubber boots on their feet and cellphones in their hands. For several hours, they crowd and jostle and elbow one another for position while an auctioneer looks from face to face and hand to hand, nodding and bending and scribbling as he goes.

Everyone gathers at a large wooden pallet on the floor. It’s filled with whole fish. The buyers and brokers push and shove and make their bids, then glide down the row to the next pallet. With the biggest fish, the tuna -- bigeye and skipjack, albacore and yellowfin -- the ends of the tail sections are cut open and filled with cut-up fish. The men reach in and grab pieces and roll them around in their fingers, examining the texture and color and fattiness.

A practiced eye

“What are they looking for?” I ask Chef Mavro.

“Bright, shiny skin. Clear, bulging eyes. Firm, resilient flesh. Bright, slime-free gills.”

Based on those characteristics, he says, they decide which fish to buy (at what price) for the restaurants and wholesalers and fish markets they represent .

Brooks Takenaka, assistant general manager of the United Fishing Agency, which owns and operates the daily auction, nudges me and points to a small white board on the far wall of the warehouse.

“The individual boats and their catch are listed over there, starting at about 1 o’clock in the morning,” he says. “Certain boats

Some buyers punch numbers into their hand-held calculators before bidding. Others talk to their principals on their cellphones. From 20 feet away, the jostling among the bidders seems gentle. “They’re just getting comfortable,” Chef Mavro tells me.

But when I join the line, I realize how forcefully each man is pushing his fellow bidders on either side. It’s like the difference between watching a professional basketball game from halfway up Staples Center and seeing the ferocity firsthand from a courtside seat.

“It’s our morning exercise,” one buyer mutters when I comment on the intense, physical jockeying.

The auction moves quickly and subtly and almost silently. There’s a steady, low hum in the room as the buyers bid with a word, a nod, a hand gesture, and when I join them, one of the brokers leans toward me and whispers, “Don’t blink or they’ll think that’s your bid.”

After each sale, the auctioneer jots a few letters and figures on a piece of paper and puts it on the fish, identifying it by weight, buyer and price. Today, in four hours, he’ll sell slightly more than 24 tons -- tuna and marlin, spearfish and swordfish, mahimahi and monchong, ono, opah, onaga and opakapaka.

About 60% to 65% of the fish will remain in the islands, with most of the rest going to the mainland -- much of it to Los Angeles -- and smaller amounts to Canada, Japan and Europe.

“A few years ago we sold 85 tons in one day,” Takenaka says. “It took us 14 1/2 hours.”

Takenaka, 54, is Hawaiian born. A marine biologist, he’s been with United Fishing Agency for 24 years, and he makes it all look easy. “But it isn’t always this quiet or this simple,” he says. “About three years ago, the butterfish [black cod] catch was way down, and some of the purveyors decided to cut up escolar and sell it as butterfish.”

He laughs at the recollection, then reddens. For many people, escolar acts as a laxative -- a strong and long-lasting laxative.

“We call it the Ex-Lax fish,” he says. “The health department got a lot of calls -- a lot of calls and a lot of questions -- and I had to lecture everyone here to stop doing that.”

Takenaka likes escolar but, as one of its more sensitive victims, he doesn’t eat it anymore. His favorite fish is alphonsin -- a bream-like species that’s in perpetually short supply.

“What little we get, I set it aside,” he says, “for myself, my favorite sushi restaurant and two other restaurants -- Alan Wong’s and Chef Mavro’s.”

Chef Mavro came to the U.S. in 1985. After two years in Denver, he moved to Hawaii, where, 11 years later, he opened his own restaurant. Last year he won the James Beard Foundation award as the best chef in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest.

Like Takenaka, Chef Mavro has his favorite Hawaiian fish, and his buyer is already bidding on it for him at today’s auction. It’s onaga, a moist, fleshy bottom fish also known as ruby snapper, and it’s become Chef Mavro’s signature dish.

“It’s a beautiful fish,” he says. “The meat is very white, very elegant. I always look here for the firm ones, the fresh, day-boat onaga, the ones caught just last night, near here, not the ones caught far out that may have been on the boat for several days.”

At his restaurant, Chef Mavro serves the onaga with sea urchin foam and leeks, accompanied these days by a glass of 1999 Loimer Gruner Veltliner from Austria. Every dish at Chef Mavro’s is accompanied by a different glass of wine.

“We don’t have a wine list,” he tells me as we walk by the rapidly dwindling pallets of fish. “I see people drink Merlot with oysters and Sauvignon Blanc with lamb. I suffer.” He clutches his heart. “I suffer for the oysters and I suffer for Sauvignon Blanc.”

So Chef Mavro and his staff test wines almost daily, trying to figure which will work best with his various creations, most of which use local fish he buys at the daily auction.

Horn of plenty

When we go to his restaurant, he serves us a salad of roasted Kahuku prawns and a rosemary garlic mousse with a modest white Burgundy -- a 2001 Rully Les Clou from Vincent Girardin. The Keahole lobster pot-au-feu with sweet basil and local vegetables comes with a glass of 2001 Ramey Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley. The Yukon potato-crusted opakapaka with a bacon-braised chiffonade of baby romaine and shaved fennel is accompanied by a 2000 Chablis from Domaine Barat. After the onaga comes squab, marinated in jasmine tea and served in Swiss chard leaves, with a chanterelle mushroom risotto -- and a glass of 1995 Rioja Gran Reserva from Montecillo.

Chef Mavro says he had a chance, a few years ago, to return to France, to take over one of the country’s most famous restaurants from an aging former three-star chef. He decided to pass, he says, and he ticks off all the problems with running a restaurant in France these days.

Then he smiles and gestures toward the fish that surround us at the auction.

“Most of all,” he says, “I just love Hawaii.”

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous Matters of Taste columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.