We were chatting outside the Four Star Sales consignment at Saratoga this summer when Sue Morris Finley, publisher of [TDN Weekend] magazine, said, “Come inside with me, there's a fish guy I want to see.” Intrigued, I followed her into the Humphrey S. Finney pavilion where Fasig-Tipton's yearling sale would begin the next day. I hadn't heard much of what she'd said about this guy on our short walk from the barns because an Orb yearling had caught my eye and I was looking up the details of his pedigree on the eNicks app on my phone.
Upstairs in the pavilion, on a table above the auctioneers' stand, I saw tuna tartare on light wafers. There really was a fish guy at Saratoga! And as Sue started speaking to him, I reached for a piece of tuna. Then for another, and another, because the tuna was fantastic. “This is David Goldsmith, the 'fish guy!'” Sue said, turning to me. I mumbled a pleasantry with my mouth half full, but Goldsmith was gracious and asked me to keep helping myself.
Turns out David Goldsmith knew someone who knew someone who knew a higher up at Fasig-Tipton and that's how he had come to be there, introducing his fish to the wealthy clientele of the horse-auction world. These people frequenting the highly selective Saratoga sale range from jet-setting owners to the peripatetic professionals who service and follow the auction circuit from Florida to California to New York to Kentucky when they're not at other points across the country. David Goldsmith's fledgling enterprise, Harbour Trading Co., was conceptualized to bring fresh fish to people like them anywhere or everywhere they go. The tuna tartare in the Finney pavilion was just a conversation starter about the quality of fish in which Goldsmith traffics. Goldsmith, I quickly learned, trades in the Tapits, War Fronts, Medaglia d'Oros, and Curlins of fish. “I figured these are the types of people who would be interested in my company,” he said of the Saratoga crowd.
Not yet 50, David Goldsmith is trim and fit and has a vague Hollywood veneer to him–he did some acting in a Melrose Place spinoff and directed a film, too–but his expertise in fish is real. It comes from 20 years as a professional fisherman. He knows where to source quality fish that can be delivered from fishing boat to kitchen table in the shortest time–far shorter, by the way, than the fish that's available to consumers in the marketplace–and that's his stock in trade.
To read the rest of this story in the TDN Weekend, click here.
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