The Economy of Scales
A Baltimore lab aims to take the science of growing clean, healthy salt-water fish to the global marketplace
Article by: Van Smith
Photos by: Christopher Myers
Published July 24, 2013
The wood-grilled whole dorado, at $34, is the highest-priced dish on the current menu at Pazo, the casually elegant restaurant in Fells Point in Baltimore. Executive chef Mario Cano Catalan gushes about the restaurant’s specimens of the high-value Mediterranean fish, whose market name is gilthead sea bream, a sparkling silver species with a band of yellowish gleam at its head.
The ones Catalan prepares weigh a pound or a little over, he says, and after scaling and gutting them, he seasons them with crushed oregano and sea salt.
“They are cooked slowly,” Catalan explains, “at a medium temperature of about 400 degrees, and the juicy, moist meat gets a nice smoky flavor from cooking with its own juice 
inside, and the skin gets super-crispy, which is excellent. The customers enjoy it very well.”
But here’s the catch: Pazo’s sea bream are not caught, nor are they from the Mediterranean. They come from a scientific laboratory in the basement of the Columbus Center downtown.
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