Tony Cobb is seated at his usual table at the Chester Fried Superstop, a roadside gas station and convenience store that serves some of the best fish and chips on Fogo Island. He is midway through an explanation of how he is reinventing Fogo's cod fishery when a waitress delivers lunch.
Mr. Cobb, a businessman-turned-social entrepreneur, stares down at his crispy, golden cod fillets. Turning a fork on its side, he splits a piece at the fattest part, revealing thick, concentric layers of white flesh that he likes to dismantle one by one, as if handling a Russian nesting doll plucked from the sea.
His ritual is interrupted every few bites by the coverall-clad fishermen who approach the table after paying for their gas. In baymen's accents and with hands held chest high, they tell Mr. Cobb, whose new fish business offers the best price for top-quality northern cod in Newfoundland, about the huge, gleaming fish they've been catching. The late fall yields the best cod of the year, from "foxy" reddish ones to black-backed hulks.
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