Hall was a big character, White says, joking that the Herald wouldn\u2019t be able to print most of their friendship stories. <\/p>\n
Philip Hall died before the Tangaroa Fish Market came to life.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was an incredibly smart businessman,\u201d White says. \u201cBut you wouldn\u2019t believe it when first meeting him because he was very laid back and he still had that very Kiwi attitude \u2013 pretty relaxed but very smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the fish market idea stuck. Especially after Hall, his \u201cbloody great mate\u201d, died. The business owner was diving for crayfish in the Coromandel when he lost his life in 2012, White says. <\/p>\n
White heard the news with a text message sent by Hall\u2019s ex-wife. He says he \u201clost all air\u201d. He started crying. Then his phone started going off \u2013 all the friends, including Kiwi professional golfer Matty Lane, were reaching out.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust mates hugging mates through a telephone,\u201d White says.<\/p>\n
Two days later, he had a \u201cbloody long session\u201d at Lane\u2019s place in LA. The two of them drank a case of Kim Crawford wine, told stories and remembered Hall\u2019s \u201claughter, mischief, generosity and love of all things Kiwi, particularly his family and mates\u201d.<\/p>\n
One summer day, White and his wife, Suzy, were at a barbecue in Santa Monica. White said he would go buy some fish. He drove 5.5km to buy that fish. He took more than two hours because of summertime traffic. But it gave him time to think.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the time we got back to the barbecue, I was in such a bloody bad mood,\u201d White says. <\/p>\n
He thought about the fish market idea and he thought about Hall throughout the night.<\/p>\n
When White woke up the next day, he said to Suzy: \u201cF*** it, let\u2019s open a fish market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tangaroa Fish Market & Raw Bar in Culver City, LA.<\/p>\n
Tangaroa Fish Market & Raw Bar, a seafood restaurant that also sells fresh, raw seafood, has been running on West Washington Boulevard in Culver City since 2015, a few years after Hall\u2019s passing. <\/p>\n
Located between downtown LA and Santa Monica, the small city (population about 40,000), also known as the \u201cHeart of Screenland\u201d, draws in tourists for its history with film studios. Over the years, it has been the home of several prominent studios, including MGM and Studio Pictures Entertainment. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy for White to talk about how the grand opening went. Because it never happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so broke by the time we opened \u2013 we didn\u2019t even have a sign,\u201d White says. \u201cI just stood on the side of the road and waved my hands.\u201d <\/p>\n
It took a while for the restaurant to get traction financially, White says. He believes running a restaurant is one of the hardest professions in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more of a labourer\u2019s passion,\u201d White says. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re always working. It doesn\u2019t matter whether you own it or not. Especially if you\u2019re a mum and pop [business] like we are \u2013 if you\u2019re not working it, you\u2019re probably not going to make it. Unless you\u2019ve got a gazillion dollars that you can afford to lose, it\u2019s a very, very hard business.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pretty much blew every penny we had, including a s***load of retirement money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kiwi band Six60 with Mark White in the centre.<\/p>\n
Eleven years later, White\u2019s efforts seem to have paid off and customers tell him they love the food. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you believe all of those review things, we\u2019re doing okay,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
He was able to expand, too, eventually opening a bar called The Washington three blocks down from the restaurant in Mar Vista\/Marina Del Rey. He\u2019s expecting Kiwi football fans to be heading in to watch the All Whites play in the upcoming Fifa World Cup. <\/p>\n
Part of the magic of his venues is the touches from home. <\/p>\n
Every day, Tangaroa staff follow a very Kiwi checklist when they open up. They put on a New Zealand-focused tourism video. They play Kiwi classics, such as songs by Dave Dobbyn. They serve fresh seafood from around the globe, but say they always stock \u014cra King Salmon and snapper from New Zealand, which White uses to make his fish and chips.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 72 hours out of the water, out of the boat, in my market, filleted down and put in batter. It\u2019s fresher than what you fellas eat back home,\u201d White says. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got the best fish and chips in America, and I don\u2019t mind shooting my mouth off about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tangaroa draws New Zealand stars when they are in town, too. Around the restaurant are jerseys signed by All Blacks and Sevens players. White says the restaurant hosted the Sevens teams\u2019 private dinners when they went over for the LA tournament, before it moved to New York. <\/p>\n
Tangaroa restaurant’s Thai chilli mussels.<\/p>\n
Owning a seafood restaurant named after the M\u0101ori god of the sea, you could expect White to have a special relationship with the ocean growing up. But he wasn\u2019t just \u201csplashing around\u201d every time he was in there. He was looking for food.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it was a great big bloody kitchen,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I guess that\u2019s stayed with me most of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
But White\u2019s favourite food does not have scales, shells, or gills of any kind. It\u2019s chicken.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you eat your own food for 11 years, you get bloody tired of it,\u201d he says. \u201cOf course, I love my seafood. But if you\u2019re around chicken all day long, you\u2019d probably say fish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. She is based in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hall was a big character, White says, joking that the Herald wouldn\u2019t be able to print most of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1443,46794,13916,11559,31787,246,8321,12632,57236,106,293,7568,78,194,6451,55623,424,5158,32573,225,231878,111,139,16546,69,123760,10270,231879,213,4497,119942,223,61,231877,6436,1316,16550,5264,1299,102,87539,6730],"class_list":["post-456265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-about","tag-angeles","tag-asked","tag-bloody","tag-doing","tag-finance","tag-fish","tag-friend","tag-hall","tag-head","tag-his","tag-honour","tag-in","tag-kiwi","tag-knew","tag-la","tag-life","tag-man","tag-mark","tag-market","tag-mid2000s","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nothing","tag-nz","tag-philip","tag-restaurants","tag-scratched","tag-sports","tag-start","tag-tangaroa","tag-the","tag-to","tag-upended","tag-well","tag-when","tag-white","tag-whites","tag-who","tag-with","tag-worked","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}