New Deal Fish Market
Carl Fantasia is the third generation behind this counter and buys at the South Boston docks every morning. Most of the fish is cut in the shop, which is why the case carries collars and live urchin.
Why go
East Cambridge has been the area's fish-market district for more than a century, and this is the shop that held it.2 The buying relationships at the Boston Fish Pier go back generations, and it shows in the range: salmon fillets, sea bass, still-live sea urchin, fatty collars.1 Ask about a head-on ocean perch and somebody will tell you how to cook it.1 Boston Magazine made it Best Fishmonger in 2019.1 Courthouse Fish Market, a few blocks up and past a hundred years old, closed in 2024, so there is one fewer of these.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever came off the pier that morning, and let them cut it.3
- Order: collars and urchin. These are the parts a counter stocks when the neighborhood knows what to do with them.1
- Avoid: turning up after work. The shop closes at 6pm.3
What locals & experts say
- Rachel Leah Blumenthal, Wyndham Lewis and Jacqueline Cain, Boston Magazine (2025):
Nearly a century old, it's now run by third-generation owner Carl Fantasia, who sources fresh seafood every morning from the South Boston docks and can tell you exactly which waters your scallops came from—and how to cook them perfectly.
2 - Max Toste of Lone Star Taco Bar, telling Boston Magazine in 2014 how he would run the kitchen across the street:
In keeping with the really authentic street food idea, we plan on walking right across the street to Carl at New Deal, buying his freshest stuff, and throwing it on the grill that day.
4
Good to know
- The shop cuts its own. Most fish sold here is broken down on site rather than arriving processed.3
Verdict
should-visit — The case is the argument: sea urchin still alive, collars, whole fish broken down on the premises rather than trucked in pre-cut, bought that morning off the Boston Fish Pier by the third Fantasia to run the shop. Boston Magazine made it Best Fishmonger in 2019, and the taqueria across the street told a reporter it planned to cook whatever Carl had. Nobody writes a dinner review of a fish counter, so the call rests on the buying and the knife work instead.