Forget fillet. This meaty, bone-in cut of fish is the star at Alice.

Chef Dave Conn built his menu of modern American sharing plates at Alice in the Italian Market around two priorities: to showcase great ingredients, and to choose those that cook especially well inside his Kopa oven.

This charcoal-fueled firebox and grill from Slovenia blazes with a 600-degree heat that touches nearly 50% of the menu with char and smoke, and its raw power can quickly turn the delicacy of a boneless fish fillet into an incinerated crisp. Conn landed on a more forgiving — and more flavorful — fish solution this year when be began roasting hamachi collars.

Those who frequent the area’s Japanese restaurants already know this izakaya specialty as hamachi kama, a tender and fatty cut sliced from behind the head and gills. The cut’s triangular brace of sturdy bones and cartilage harbors pockets of plump flesh that emerge moist and meaty from the collar’s various corners with the gentle poke of a chopstick or fork. Other fish have meaty collars, too, such as salmon, halibut, and tuna, and can be found as limited specials from top sushi kitchens that butcher whole fish.

But not only is the rich white flesh of a collar from a large hamachi (otherwise known as yellowtail or amberjack) incredibly versatile, it’s now also available as a standalone cut from purveyors like Samuels Seafood Co., allowing enough quantities to be considered as a standard menu item.

The traditional Japanese version typically keeps it simple with a salt-broiling technique. But Conn, who used to eat collars for occasional staff meal specials back in his Tinto days 15 years ago, goes all-in with a Mediterranean treatment, seasoning a pair of 12-ounce hunks with salt and good olive oil, then basting them with green herbs and lemon zest before a finishing blast to caramelize its skin over the coals.

With lemon to squeeze over top, I dove in hands-first to meticulously strip each of my those collar chops of every juicy morsel, and it was the closest thing I’ve experienced to eating fish-like ribs, or “fin wings,” as they’ve occasionally been called.

They’re so tasty it’s no wonder the collars have been a menu hit. Alice serves about 15 orders per night for its 42 seats, and is on target for 1,000 pounds this year, according to Ryan Rubino of Samuels, who says that figure alone will account for nearly a third of the company’s regional demand, which has increased seven-fold over the past three years. Aside from sushi bars, resourceful kitchens such as Little Fish and River Twice also occasionally serve it, taking advantage of a cut too often discarded in the past by American kitchens as a throwaway.

“It speaks to the openness of Philadelphia’s dining scene right now that our customers are willing to go for what is essentially the jaw bone as their fish entree,” says Conn, who also serves a whole branzino.

Indeed, any time the dining public votes for the flavor of bone-in cuts over the tidy-but-wasteful convenience of boneless fillets, it represents progress in my opinion. And one chef’s quest to find a seafood solution to the roaring heat of Alice’s charcoal-fired hearth, it seems, is at least partly responsible.

Grilled hamachi collars, $32, Alice, 901 Christian St., Philadelphia, PA 19147, 215-798-6766; alicephiladelphia.com