Fourth generation marks 70 years of Quality Seafood
by Garth Meyer
Before the pier parking garage, before the condos, before the name International Boardwalk, there was Quality Seafood, which marks its 70th anniversary this weekend.
“Not sure if we have an official date. No one can remember back that far around here,” said Jeff Jones, president and CEO.
The fish market started on the original pier — and then lost its lease when the pier’s front section was redeveloped in the early 1960s.
“Urban Renewal came in, we were given three days to move,” said Ann Belson, a third-generation Quality Seafood employee, then a pre-teen.
Her father, the late Pete Dragich, Sr., found a spot in what was known as “Basin Three of King Harbor,” a strip below Harbor Drive originally designed as storage spaces for moored boats.
An imported goods shop was about to close, and Dragich made a handshake deal to take over the north-facing spot, in what is today called the International Boardwalk. You could see the open ocean, with only a dirt parking lot across the way (where the pier parking garage extends to now).
Dragich family members soon were back up on the Pier, passing out handbills to get the word out about the market’s new location.
“I remember, my mother and I standing at the base of the Monstad Pier giving them out, telling people that we hadn’t closed, we had just moved,” said Belson, now a Quality Seafood employee for more than 50 years.
She remembers shelling shrimp as a child for her father, which sold for 15 cents per pound.
“The old pier was our playground,” she said.
Belson’s mother, Violet Dragich, is 95 now, and still active; she worked at the business into her 80s.
The first Quality Seafood location, on the original Redondo Beach pier, 1950s. Photo courtesy Quality Seafood
Local haul
Quality Seafood’s 1953 beginning was in an era of more commercial fishing out of King Harbor, but a fair amount still happens today. Local catch arrives at Quality Seafood year-round.
Right now, three 30-50 lb. deliveries of spiny lobster come in per week. The Southern California season runs October to March. Also rock crab and conch, and in November, mackerel, halibut, bluefin tuna and mahi mahi.
Three weeks ago, a man caught a 100-pound bluefin off of King Harbor and sold it to Quality Seafood.
“It’s not as big a commercial fishing scene today, but there is a hearty bunch of souls out of Redondo Beach,” said Jones, Belson’s son-in-law.
The big bluefin remained on ice in the fish case for a few days as customers ordered pounds off it at a time. Cutting them were invariably two of Quality Seafood’s longest serving employees – outside of the Dragich family – Jorge Lucumi, and Bobby Prasad, both with more than 35 years at the Quality fish case. They also handle about a hundred locally-caught lobsters per week.
“The institutional knowledge in that market, in the employees in the 10-40 year range, gives us depth of knowledge in every department,” Jones said.
Francisca Cruz has worked for 40 years in the kitchen of the restaurant.
Western Smoke Fish was one of four Redondo Beach seafood markets owned by the Dragich family in 1950. They were soon combined to form Quality Seafood. Photo courtesy Quality Seafood
Far and wide
Another big seller is sea urchin, the bright golden ingredient used in sushi. Quality Seafood sells live-caught sea urchin year-round. Jack Butler, its supplier, out of Huntington Beach, dives 100 to 110-feet with a scraper tool four times per week, and delivers from his refrigerated van.
One time, he arrived in his boat; straight to the dock out front, on a busy summer day when Jones was out of urchin.
Any fish nearing its sell-by date is smoked in-house.
The Dragich family also has a relationship with a family in Hawaii going back generations. The Tamashiros ship fish from the Honolulu docks’ auction once a week to LAX: swordfish, opaka paka, tuna, ono, opah, kampachi.
Quality Seafood picks it up by van from a refrigerated airport warehouse. Flown-in as well are Eastern lobsters, clams, mussels and shellfish from Maine.
“Trying to quantify, why do people like us – it’s the experience,” said Jones. “There are no TVs. There’s really bad reception so there’s no phones. The tables are concrete, it’s all about the experience.”
For Saturday’s 70th anniversary, 2,000 pounds of Santa Barbara stone crab is on its way, to sell for $5.99 per pound.
“When it’s gone, it’s gone,” Jones said.
Giveaways will be part of the celebration, beer specials from Kona Brewing, and the city has granted a special permit for mariachi players.
The original Redondo Beach “Monstad” pier had a tram at one time, seen in this photo from 1960, with Quality Seafood’s first location in the background. Photo by Linda Aust
The family
Jones married into the Dragich family in 1999. Eight years ago, he and wife Cassie (Ann’s niece) moved with their three sons from Half Moon Bay. Jeff joined Quality Seafood after 22 years with Trader Joe’s. He opened the Pasadena-born chain’s first east coast location in 1996 in Boston.
He is now one of Quality Seafood’s 70 employees in the summer, and one of 55 in the winter.
Cassie’s grandfather, the late Pete Dragich, Sr., on the subject of expansion: “Always shot it down,” said Jones. “‘If we do this right, this is all we need,’ he’d say.”
The business kept up, decade after decade. The city of Redondo Beach once asked Dragich, Sr. in 1970s to take over the entire International Boardwalk as master leaseholder.
During the 1988 Pier fire, black smoke enveloped the market and restaurant. The winter storm the same year flooded Quality Seafood and blew out its electrical.
Today, regulars come from as far away as Las Vegas and Utah.
“They’re loading up their ice chests, and taking it home,” said Jones.
Pete Sr., wanted Quality Seafood to be handed down, generation to generation. It’s on its fourth now, and a fifth is showing interest.
“I told my oldest son (18), he needed to work somewhere else first,” Jones said. “It’s better to learn and make your mistakes without being under the microscope of the family.”
Now at the 70th anniversary, Jones knows for sure that he still has a T-shirt from the 50th.
So it continues, Pete Jr. as chief operating officer — a 50-plus year veteran; Ann as chief financial officer, and Cassie in bookkeeping and accounting. In high school, she sold popcorn out front.
Pete Sr. remained part of Quality Seafood through the early 2000s, as “Ambassador of Goodwill.”
“The business isn’t just a generational passing of the baton for the Dragich family. It’s also a generational experience for hundreds, if not thousands of families,” Jones said.
“That is really the reward for all of the years we put in,” Belson said. ER
Pier Avenue and “Basin Three of King Harbor” before it was renamed the International Boardwalk in the early 1960s when the Pier area was redeveloped. Photo courtesy Quality Seafood