Black Drum

I always order drumfish when it’s the fish of the day unless there’s something obviously better. Funny: The fish was once despised. But after its cousin, the redfish, was banned from commercial fishing, black drum took its place in restaurants and markets. And suddenly we found that drum wasn’t so bad after all. Delicious, in fact.

Drum and redfish are similar in many ways. The right-size drum is a two-to-four-pounder called a “puppy drum,” and it’s a nice fish indeed. It has the same white-with-a-tinge-of-gray color and flakes of about the same size and texture as speckled trout (another relative) and, in most cases, makes a good substitute for it.