Joe “Tuna” Centrone, gregarious wholesaler at the Fulton Fish Market, cast a new line on life in 2005. Heavy since childhood thanks to his calorific Italian grandmother, Tuna underwent lap-band stomach surgery, shed 80 pounds, followed the fish market to Hunts Point in the Bronx and filmed the pilot for his television show, Joe Tuna.
Fast-forward five years. Today, Tuna and his production partner Cesar Villacis De Lucia have signed onto NYCtv, the city’s public television channel, film on-site in Hunts Point and could bring De Lucia’s production firm to the Bronx.
“I want to do for the south Bronx what Chris Rock did for Bedford-Stuyvesant,” Tuna said. “We want to change the country’s perception of the south Bronx. Hunts Point is America’s food market. There is so much here.”
Raised in Woodside, Queens, Tuna stayed in his grandmother’s kitchen to sneak bites before his three sisters and five cousins. He remembers his grandmother in black – a “black belt mourner” – in front of a cast iron pot with flour on her dress.
“She used to stuff meatballs in my face,” Tuna laughed. “And homemade pastries. She’d start to cook Easter dinner a month and a half before Easter.”
Tuna’s father ran a bar and a luncheonette. He ate with abandon and died young, at 52 after eight heart attacks.
“He’d eat a gallon of ice cream, butter with cheese,” Tuna said. “As long as he also had red wine and garlic we figured he’d be okay.”
Tuna, who became a fishmonger when he was 22 or 23 year old, inherited the culinary gene.
“I learned a lot from my grandmother and my father,” he said.
But Tuna also learned how to eat. By 2005, when he himself turned 52, Tuna resembled – in his own words – a “beached whale.” He remembered his father and was spooked. Tuna chose surgery and a renewed focus on healthy greens and fish.
De Lucia, who worked for Tuna at a fish store in Jackson Heights as a teen – the older man interviewed De Lucia on a Northern Boulevard bus stop bench – broke into the Los Angeles production scene after a stint at college in Manhattan. But De Lucia never forgot his fishy friend.
“Joe has such a great personality,” he said. “The guy knows how to work a room.”
So De Lucia pitched the fishmonger a television show. Each episode, Tuna, by now a Fulton Fish Market wholesaler, would tell a colorful story, buys from a colorful vendor and cooks a colorful meal live on camera inside the Fulton Fish Market.
The pair shot a pilot in Manhattan but the show didn’t gain traction until the Fulton Fish Market settled down in the Bronx. In 2009, NYCtv inked Joe Tuna to five seasons – 60 episodes. The show airs in March.
“We showcase the market,” De Lucia said. “We have a mobile kitchen, so Joe cook son the spot. There are guys on forklifts in the background. He feeds them at the end of each episode.”
Tuna and De Lucia want to “take the fear out of fish.” They were both raised on porgy sandwiches; although most people will order fish at a restaurant, many are frightened to buy and cook fish at home, De Lucia explained.
Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation founder Josephine Infante is all ears.
“Joe is really going to highlight the market,” Infante said. “We have food from 60 countries around the world. Plantains from the Caribbean to spices from Thailand.”
Tuna remembers when his grandfather made he and a cousin gather mussels on Long Island. His grandmother cooked only mussels for a week and Tuna didn’t touch another mollusk for years. When he returned to mussels, he did so “with a vengeance.”
“I like to make mussel salad,” Tuna said. “Mussels with garlic and olive oil. Chop up red onions. Toss in an avocado, tomatoes. These are good foods and good for you.”
Tuna originally opposed the move from Manhattan to the Bronx but loves Hunts Point today. In Manhattan, there were no modern machines, no refrigerated displays.
“You could hear the display ice melt in the summer,” he said. “It was scary.”
The Fulton Fish Market “belongs in Hunts Point,” also home to America’s largest produce and meat markets, Tuna said.
De Lucia has several television shows in the works. A fiscally responsible business owner, he sees potential in a move from Los Angeles to warehouses in the low-rent Bronx. A Hispanic American, he’d love to create jobs for young minorities in the borough.
De Lucia wants to steal some business from Long Island City and Astoria for Hunts Point, he said.
Jeremie Sautter of HPEDC agreed.
“Cesar’s heart is here,” Sautter said. “He wants a Silvercup Studios in the Bronx and he’s serious about it.”
Meanwhile, check out Joe Tuna on NYCtv. Get ready for lobster, shrimp and of course, tuna.
Reach reporter Daniel Beekman at 718 742-3383 or dbeekman@cnglocal.com
