Fish is in Liwei Liao’s blood. “When we moved from Taiwan to New York, we lived three or four blocks away from Central Park, and that’s where I would always just go fish,” Liao tells Observer. His uncle had a sushi bar in White Plains, and Liao remembers eating lots of raw fish as a child.

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Liao was only five years old when he would go fishing in the park, but he already had fishing experience with his father in Taiwan. About a year later, Liao’s family moved to Bayside, Queens, and the angling adventures all over the Long Island Sound began. His dad eventually bought a boat, which led to many fishing trips to Connecticut, too. What really shaped him, however, was what he consumed on long fishing trips, when he was about 10 years old.

“We were on party boats for extended periods of time,” he says. “You fish all day, and it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re hungry, let’s eat fish.’ And it always sucked. It was never any good eating it on the boat. You can imagine a bunch of classic Asian dudes thinking, ‘Oh yeah, this is the freshest thing, right on the water.’ But I remember that it was always messy and bloody. It was never the same as what we ate at home, because we took care of our fish when we got........

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