Phil feels lucky.
It’s a Friday afternoon and the dining room is in motion. Guests find tables as others leave, amounting to a full house over an extended lunch rush. Outside people follow GPS beacons, their cell phones leading them around the corner toward the restaurant entrance.
Meanwhile, an SUV rolls carefully down Merritt Street. A few more blocks and the vehicle and its passengers – a family packed front and back – will be among the farms northeast of town. A few minutes later the same gray four-door returns, just as slowly. This time a finger points from a passenger window.
“We get a little walking traffic and car traffic,” observes Phil DiGirolamo, the restaurant’s owner. “We didn’t have that in Moss Landing.”
Just a few weeks after opening in its new downtown Castroville location, Phil’s Fish Market has been found by its legion of regulars – although, without obvious signage, some electronic assistance or a few passes down the main drag before you catch a glimpse of the place are a part of the process.
Castroville would seem an unlikely location for a long-time bayside destination. The nearby highway intersection is well traveled, but for the most part with cars and trucks headed elsewhere. Furrows of vegetables that radiate from the town are more suggestive of a salad bowl than fresh seafood.
Yet DiGirolamo is quick to point out that his corner lot is just three miles from Moss Landing. And the catch hardly suffers.
“Instead of delivery from a forklift, we get it from a little van,” he says.
Indeed, Phil’s Fish House already feels settled in its new home. There’s a patina to the 1869 building and its many lives – including several years as an Italian restaurant – that suits the establishment. Familiar faces greet guests, and those seated around modest tabletops wave and call as friends enter the dining room.
It’s as if Phil’s has been tucked into the space for decades rather than weeks. The menu remains the same – extensive, with standout features that those in the know gravitate toward, such as fish and chips, charbroiled salmon and halibut tacos. The kitchen still offers clam chowder, in both New England and Manhattan styles. Perhaps most importantly, the family-recipe cioppino that gained national fame for the place when DiGirolamo topped celebrity chef Bobby Flay in a 2009 Food Network throwdown continues to reign.
“The vibes are really good,” DiGirolamo observes. “The building has a nice feel to it; you feel comfortable.”
A building with history dating back before the intrusion of modernity is fitting. DiGirolamo has conformed as software became a necessary presence in the industry, but it is a grudging accommodation. When he looks at his desktop computer and considers the shackles that come with it, DiGirolamo sometimes plots revenge.
“I want to throw my coffee cup at it,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s like being married.”
Otherwise, the transition went smoothly, something that’s not really supposed to happen. The veteran staff – a few have been with DiGirolamo for a couple of decades – adapted quickly to the new pattern.
Phil’s lost only two months between shutting down in Moss Landing and coming back to life in Castroville. And the restaurant gained a dedicated parking lot out back, along with plenty of seating indoors and out.
There are finishing touches that remain. DiGirolamo expects to bring a fish market counter back at some point in the near future. And he’s patient as the application for a beer and wine license winds its way toward approval, pointing out that people are drawn to Phil’s for its menu offerings. Finally, whether tourists will also follow Phil’s to Castroville, DiGirolamo isn’t certain.
However, he is clearly happy with where Phil’s landed.
It’s been 40 years since DiGirolamo first opened in a cramped Moss Landing spot. “In my mind, I had this image – pretty much what we’re doing today,” he says. “This building has a lot of happiness in it.”