Legal Sea Foods boss’s ‘cold fish’ Clinton ad draws outrage

The boss of Legal Sea Foods has raised a stink for referring to Hillary Clinton as “cold fish” in a provocative ad.

“We have a term for cold fish,” reads the caption under a portrait of smirking Clinton in the ad. “Sushi.”

Along the bottom of the tongue-in-cheek ad is a photo of the chain’s CEO, Roger Berkowitz, the words “Berkowitz for President” and #feeltheberk – a riff on Bernie Sanders’ “Feel the Bern” slogan.

Legal Sea Foods ran the full-page ad in Monday’s edition of The Boston Globe.

Berkowitz blew off the carping as a load of pollocks.

“Our ads tend to be a little bit provocative to begin with,” he told Boston.com Monday. “This one was kind of interesting, because the blowback — in terms of people saying there was misogyny, there was racism, there was sexism — it was such a bizarre, knee-jerk reaction.”

“Cold fish” usually means an emotionless person – but also can be used to describe an unresponsive sexual partner.

Legal Sea Foods, whose ad about Berkowitz’s fictional run for president was developed by New York-based ad agency Devito/Verdi, has raised hackles before.

In 2008, it offered a mocking mea culpa for ads comparing the appearance of Boston’s transit system to halibut, the Boston Globe reported.

Three years later, the chain poked fun at conservationists and wildlife activists, the paper reported.

“Save the crab,” began one spot. “Save it to show that every creature is sacred, no matter how small. Or, just save it so we can chop it up into tasty little crab cakes.”

And this year, it was assailed for its ads targeting Mexicans (“If we build a wall on the border, who will eat our delicious fish tacos?”) and the LGBT community (“I support the gay community. That’s why we serve rainbow trout.”).

Most recently, Legal Sea Foods ran an ad before the Republican National Convention mocking Donald Trump and former candidate Marco Rubio’s comments about the candidate’s “small hands.”

“I can assure you, it’s not the size of your hands that are important,” the caption read. “But rather, the size of your shrimp.”

Berkowitz told Fox News that Clinton is not known for being particularly warm, but he wanted to cut bait with the sexism controversy.

“If you go online and look at the definition of cold fish, more often than not it’s used on men,” Berkowitz told the Globe. “I think it’s gender-neutral.”