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I'm keeping it local - Quality Seafood Market's live shellfish and fresh fish emporium is located on the Redondo Beach Pier - a short drive south of Los Angeles Int'l airport. I often tag along with my wife to visit her parents, whose condo is within fly-casting distance.
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The Redondo Beach Pier's Quality Seafood Market offers fresh live locally-caught sea urchin at $6.99 a pound. The whole place makes for quite a scene: roiling water in metal bins loaded with delicacies like live Pismo Beach clams, huge local lobsters, locally caught conch, and the ebony starbursts of the prickly sea urchin.
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It's a five-minute wait as the delicacy is drained and cleaned, then presented with a spoon inside, resting against the black jagged rim of the urchin bowl.
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And you can get inexpensive beer on tap or in large bottles at a counter behind you. Loaded down, just weave your way to an open-air table through throngs of mallet-pounding locals (and Japanese tourists) feasting on fresh-boiled crab legs, split buttered lobster and plump jumbo shrimp. A Mariachi band was playing for tips the Sunday afternoon I was there.
Sea urchin is exotic, so be prepared for stares as parents point your way and their kids look on, open- mouthed. Even you may be taken aback when you notice that the sea urchin's black spikes wave and swivel in circles -- like it is still alive! Don't worry, once the shell is cracked, the creature is gone -- like the detached tail of a lizard, the spikes still wiggle.
The faint of heart may need to proceed with caution (the video includes a brief sea urchin-cleaning scene). But, if you have gutted a fish or boiled a live lobster, then continue on. And if you have eaten fresh clams or oysters, you have eaten a "live" critter.
So dive into my latest video for a tasty sampling of the strange, spiny, sweetly delicious sea urchin. And if you are a fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus then you will appreciate the absurdist lengths The 99 Cent Chef goes to - chasing a runaway Sea Urchin for lunch!
Chasing Sea Urchin - Video
Play it here.The video runs 4 minutes 34 seconds.
Click here to view or embed from youtube. 99 thanks to Amy for extra camerawork!
Quality Seafood Market
130 S. International Boardwalk
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Phone: 310) 374-2382 or 310) 372-6408