Tangaroa Fish Market: The man who upended his life to honour his Kiwi friend in LA

Hall was a big character, White says, joking that the Herald wouldn’t be able to print most of their friendship stories.

“He was an incredibly smart businessman,” White says. “But you wouldn’t believe it when first meeting him because he was very laid back and he still had that very Kiwi attitude – pretty relaxed but very smart.”

But the fish market idea stuck. Especially after Hall, his “bloody great mate”, died. The business owner was diving for crayfish in the Coromandel when he lost his life in 2012, White says.

White heard the news with a text message sent by Hall’s ex-wife. He says he “lost all air”. He started crying. Then his phone started going off – all the friends, including Kiwi professional golfer Matty Lane, were reaching out.

“Just mates hugging mates through a telephone,” White says.

Two days later, he had a “bloody long session” at Lane’s place in LA. The two of them drank a case of Kim Crawford wine, told stories and remembered Hall’s “laughter, mischief, generosity and love of all things Kiwi, particularly his family and mates”.

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.

“By the time we got back to the barbecue, I was in such a bloody bad mood,” White says.

He thought about the fish market idea and he thought about Hall throughout the night.

When White woke up the next day, he said to Suzy: “F*** it, let’s open a fish market.”

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’s passing.

Located between downtown LA and Santa Monica, the small city (population about 40,000), also known as the “Heart of Screenland”, 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.

It’s easy for White to talk about how the grand opening went. Because it never happened.

“I was so broke by the time we opened – we didn’t even have a sign,” White says. “I just stood on the side of the road and waved my hands.”

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.

“It’s more of a labourer’s passion,” White says.

“You’re always working. It doesn’t matter whether you own it or not. Especially if you’re a mum and pop [business] like we are – if you’re not working it, you’re probably not going to make it. Unless you’ve got a gazillion dollars that you can afford to lose, it’s a very, very hard business.

“We pretty much blew every penny we had, including a s***load of retirement money.”

Eleven years later, White’s efforts seem to have paid off and customers tell him they love the food.

“If you believe all of those review things, we’re doing okay,” he says.

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’s expecting Kiwi football fans to be heading in to watch the All Whites play in the upcoming Fifa World Cup.

Part of the magic of his venues is the touches from home.

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 Ōra King Salmon and snapper from New Zealand, which White uses to make his fish and chips.

“It’s 72 hours out of the water, out of the boat, in my market, filleted down and put in batter. It’s fresher than what you fellas eat back home,” White says.

“I’ve got the best fish and chips in America, and I don’t mind shooting my mouth off about that.”

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’ private dinners when they went over for the LA tournament, before it moved to New York.

Owning a seafood restaurant named after the Māori god of the sea, you could expect White to have a special relationship with the ocean growing up. But he wasn’t just “splashing around” every time he was in there. He was looking for food.

“For me, it was a great big bloody kitchen,” he says. “And I guess that’s stayed with me most of my life.”

But White’s favourite food does not have scales, shells, or gills of any kind. It’s chicken.

“If you eat your own food for 11 years, you get bloody tired of it,” he says. “Of course, I love my seafood. But if you’re around chicken all day long, you’d probably say fish.”

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