This weekend, we went to Whole Foods so that I could pick out some wild fish to prepare for dinner tonight. We ended up picking out some bluefish fillets that were priced at $9.99/lb. At Whole Foods, this sounds fairly affordable, but after paying almost $19 for four fillets, it seemed like quite a lot of money to spend on just a handful of meals. And considering that bluefish was once considered the fish that fisherman tossed back into the sea and fed to other fish, it’s quite a markup. Once upon a time at a local grocery store in Cambridge, MA, you could get great and fresh bluefish fillets for less than $4/lb.

It’s a decent amount of money to spend, but I rather spend money on a fish that’s rich and fatty like this than a boring, bland white fish. I don’t understand people who want to eat fish but don’t like the actual taste or smell of a real fish. Fish like halibut and tilapia have no real, distinct flavor. There’s little way to tell one white fish from another in terms of flavor because they have none. Like articles I’ve read about bluefish have said, bluefish is for people who want to know they are eating fish, not people who want to eat fish but don’t want to taste fish.