This is the place to get fresh on Valentine’s Day.
The Fulton Fish Market is opening its doors to the public on the romantic holiday for a rare, offbeat date night experience – complete with seafood towers, absinthe tastings and gargantuan hot tubs on its selling room floor.
The bustling, 400,000-square-foot Bronx facility will be converted into a steamy getaway for love birds, where diners can listen to Latin jazz music as they enjoy tableside-shucked oysters and a “guided absinthe ritual,” fish market reps said.
“The thought is that we might attract the obscure couples of New York City,” market CEO Nicole Ackerina told The Post of the fishy V-Day fiesta, which is part of a series of themed events the market is holding on various holidays as part of an effort to rebrand as a tourist destination.
“We wanted to do something really funky and playful … to highlight the diversity in our programming.”
Culinary historian Justin Fornal will also be serving up an oral history of aphrodisiacs alongside a main course of Hidden Fjord salmon and seafood paella during the festivities.
The event, dubbed “Absinthe & Oysters: A Forbidden Valentine’s,” will serve as the market’s inaugural “Fish Market Monologues” history lecture at the site — all of which will be hosted by Fornal and are slated to usher in a new era of visitors to the wholesale market.
“New Yorkers have access to so much, that it’s easy to get jaded and try to find an experience you haven’t had,” Fornal said, noting plans to connect the menu to its relevant maritime traditions, global trade routes and cultural rituals.
“I guarantee whoever walks in the door is going to come out tasting something or experiencing something they haven’t before.”
The quirky maritime affair is part of a renewed effort transform the market – which moved after 183 years from lower Manhattan’s bustling South Street Seaport to the Bronx two decades ago – into a 21st century cultural hub and travel destination for adventurous foodies and Gotham history buffs, Ackerina said.
“Since that relocation, we’ve been operating in hiding,” Ackerina said, and “we wanted to take a look at how we wanted to look at ourselves in the future.
“Fish Market Monologues allows us to share the stories and cultures that have always existed inside this market, but have rarely been seen by the public.”
The event series will continue through 2026 with live music, historical storytelling, “ritualized” tastings and more – with themes ranging from a bold Celtic jaunt to a Caribbean cuisine fete to a “13 Thanksgivings” feast.
The site also acquired permits to launch a massive daytime rave over Memorial Day Weekend headlined by electronic music DJ Solomun — and one of two shows are already sold-out.
“We want to make the historic market a global stage … by expanding the tourism with dining, with tours, with large-scale events,” Ackerina said, noting the transformation was inspired by Tokyo’s renown global fish market tourism industry.
“The market in Japan is the largest in the world as a global destination for tourism,” Ackerina said. “That’s the end goal, to bring [that] here.”
“A lot of people think they can’t come here,” Fornal chimed in. “We’re finding a way to let New York that, yes, these doors are open.”
The legendary late-night maritime marketplace was considered among the most important wholesale fish markets of the 19th century, and remains the largest in the U.S. to date, reps said.
Little has changed in the decades since, and the rare vestige of old New York still sees about two dozen fish-mongering vendors — some of which are fourth, fifth or sixth-generation sellers — slinging products daily on the noisy market floor in the wee hours of the night.
“It’s a historically gritty environment: I feel that the Bronx is the last real New York City borough, for its grit,” Ackerina said:
“If you’re here in the middle of the night, you can feel the sense of the generations that have passed through.”