Spanning several decades and two vastly different continents and cultures, Lance Haggard’s restaurant industry resumé is robust. He started in food service at 16, moving to China after college for 12 years, where he opened eight different restaurants. Haggard says he left when the environment there became increasingly unwelcome to foreigners.
He was tired of the big-city vibe, so he moved to Santa Cruz where he was hired as manager, and later partner, at Firefish Grill. The restaurant’s design is simple and light, with an open exhibition kitchen and floor-to-ceiling ocean view windows. Much of the upscale, mostly seafood menu is cooked over an open flame. Appetizers include calamari and large, tender crab cakes; entrées include a bountiful cioppino, a char-grilled pork chop and fresh, wild salmon.
What was your time in China like?
LANCE HAGGARD: During the 2000s, there were about 75,000 Western foreigners where I was based in Shanghai. So, there was a lot of Western influence, but it was challenging to teach Western-style service, the idea of greeting your tables more personably, coursing out a meal and learning so many different diverse dishes and cocktails. That experience helped me to have a more worldly approach and be able to connect with people from all over the globe.
Give me the details on your salmon sourcing.
We really try to respect the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s suggestions for sustainable seafood. Most farms have GMO-stocked salmon that are pumped full of antibiotics and fed an unnatural diet. But we get ours from Vancouver, where they use wild-stock indigenous salmon fed exactly what they eat in the wild, and are grown in huge open ocean pens. Short of a line-caught salmon, this is the best option.
25 Municipal Wharf, Santa Cruz, 831-423-5200; firefishgrill.net
Cute story but a seriously sub par place to dine.