Catalina Offshore Products — Restaurant in San Diego

San Diego's premier seafood monger's Tommy Gomes is as close to the fresh seafood he sells as a farmer to his crop.

He sells to the top sushi restaurants around and their non local fish is usually frozen on ship long before most palces which are flashed at the docks. They take great pride in overnighting everything.

They are Southern California's premier uni specialists selling hand harvested gold and premium, both fit for raw consumption. They do sell whole, but can't guarantee it will be live upon delivery, but still safe for consumption.

I frequently use them when I practice my sushi skills because of their variety package which includes everything for the beginner to notice.

What's nice is all their deals are with the fishermen in the boats, no middle men here. With most of their local catch coming from Baja and their offshore feeding grounds, that 1 on 1 relationship is crucial to keep the chain of validation. The man makes the food legit even if I can't taste it I know they take every step necessary to sell the freshest possible seafood.

The cooking emporiums help show local chefs what can be done with all the fish parts. No longer are only Japanese restaurants selling Hamachi kama collars or how black cod which is super sustainable can replace so many traditionally overfished sushi species. Live prawns and lobsters both spiny and cold water when in season are worth it. Their best deal is the pasteurized crab meat. Though not blue or Dungeness, the freshness and amount of stone claw meat is unbeatable. Save a ton of cash when mixed with blue for crab cakes for parties.

My usual order is albacore and yellow tail or salmon, seaweed salad and uni and whatever is in season as most fish are seasonal. Sign up for the e-mails to find out about call in specials and they now have a rewards point program. Get in close and maybe you'll be let back in the warehouse to see the amazing operation they have.

Without naming names or going into too much detail it's the best place to come for your seafood needs, both...

My wife and I love nigiri sushi. We would go out and eat sushi all the time but always wanted to make our own. However if you've done your research you would know that to kill any parasites in a fish you need to reach certain temperature(per FDA) requirements. Conventional freezers don't reach that temperature. So we never had the chance to make our own sushi.

Eventually with the lockdown of all restaurants we found CatalinaOp. And to our surprise they offered shipping to Arizona.

We've already done two orders and so far so good. We tried 4 different types of salmon, one type of tuna and some seaweeds. The quality was superb! Absolutely loved it.

The shipping takes less than 24 hours so by the time it reaches our address the fish is still frozen.

With all of that said I would like to express a few concerns. With both orders the boxes had stickers on the outside indicating that there was ice inside. However both times there was no ice anywhere to be found.

Nonetheless I am still giving Catalina 5 stars because the fish is still well frozen when it arrives.

Their website can do a bit of work. For instance one of the tunas says it comes as 1.1 each. Not clear if that is 1.1oz or lbs. I had to email them to find out. Things can be a little better organized to make the website look more user friendly

Here's a few tips if you are thinking about ordering online: If your order reaches $300 you get free shipping. Otherwise shipping is $50(remember it's overnight). Before you purchase look online for coupon codes. Right now there's one for 10% off. Enroll in their email program. They have weekly deals. This week they had a good deal on frozen sushi...

Be warned--no way to track your online order and no phone support for tracking the shipment. We ordered $300+ for a party on Sunday. Our order was placed on Thursday and acknowledged. We paid for FedEx express delivery on Saturday (Extra $5) as our order had free shipping. By 4 PM Saturday (we are in Midwest) we became concerned as we had not received a tracking number, nor had we received the order. A call to the number on the website went to a recording saying online order assistance was closed. We tried the general phone number and the person who answered could not give us any information and then transferred us to a voicemail box. We tried emailing--and found out our order had not shipped due to an issue with the FedEx label. They offered to ship the following week or give us free shipping (which we already had). Extremely poor customer service--not notifying us of a problem when they had our email address (and I am fairly certain our phone # as well). So we will spend tonight re-vamping our menu and driving 20 miles to procure ingredients.

Do not recommend for online orders--unreliable and absent customer service.

Edited to add: I was very pleased to hear from Catalina Offshore Products regarding my unsatisfactory first order. They went above and beyond to make an unfortunate situation right---so I am giving them a huge thumbs up and a...