Stace G.
Yelp
New Yorkers, what's wrong with you? Why are there only 2 reviews of Win Choy?
For all the weirdo tourists taking pictures (who DOES that? At least I know I'm in about a hundred stranger's photo albums grocery shopping, I guess?), Win Choy's employees delightfully ignore them. No sir, we are not recreating San Francisco's fisherman's wharf or the entire coastline of Seattle for you, not today. Win Choy is instead all business--what do you want, how much should it weigh, period.
My strategy for Win Choy's was to go in blind, buy whatever looked amazing that day and then go across the street to Starbucks to Google what to do with it. Next to Win Choy's is a good meat market with ox tail, tripe and other animal artifacts often poo-poo'ed by Fresh Emporium. And when it's not dead-of-winter, the produce carts along Walker will do you right for fresh and cheap veggies. I've come back with my bodyweight in shrimp, baby octopus, smelt, salmon steak, crawdads, and once, three live lobsters.
Now living in California, so far away from Win Choy's and its resulting dinners with my dad, it's an easy mark for nostalgia. Even without my dad and the gin martinis he made for us, without the tourists and carrying fish back home on the 6 line, Win Choy's is hard to replace. I've found other fish markets here in LA, but nothing's quite the same as my favorite fish market on Walker.
Pros: selection so fresh it's still moving, variety, price, tradition
Cons: it's open air, so chilly in winter
Trivia: in a bunch of films, most recently Woody Allen's "Whatever Works."