I was lucky enough to spend some time travelling through Norway, Sweden and Denmark and I love the way that in those countries, hunting, fishing and foraging is a way of life, contradictory to the expensive restaurant fluffery that we sometimes get in Britain. I am especially passionate about fishing, it’s one of the few times that I get to switch my brain off and I always have a rod in the back of my car, just in case. I love fishing the chalk streams of Southern England as well as the chunky seas that surround the UK. Whenever I’m on holiday by the sea, I always head to the harbour where you’ll find the fisherman slamming big boxes down and 99.9% of the time, they’ll sell some of their fish to you. Fish is best from these places, vibrant and glistening, not sunken-eyed on a slab. Which is why, in London, I only really go to Kensington Place Fish Shop. They carry a small variety of fish but it’s excellent.
Ethics is very important when it comes to buying fish and although there’s a lot of information around, it isn’t always necessarily correct. It can also be quite hard to find out where things come from. Yes, there is a lot of over-fishing but it isn’t necessarily true of all fisheries. Yes, we know that overall numbers of certain fish are worryingly low, but it also needs to be said that certain fisheries which are run properly will have healthy stocks. Overfishing is definitely a huge problem not only changing the natural environment of a given locality but it is also highly detrimental for uninformed communities who maybe catching these fish themselves, or watching while others remove it to foreign markets.
I like to champion lesser known fishes such as scad (horse mackerel). Take weaver fish, for example, we only think of it as a little brute, here to violate your foot with its poisonous spine. They are infact delicious but we send them abroad to France. We have huge spider crab fisheries but we don’t eat any of it. We sell it to the Spanish and Portuguese who love it and quite rightly so as certainly the white flesh is superior to the meat of the brown crab. If it’s ugly or fiddly, very often the British can’t be bothered with it. The one fish that I don’t eat is eel. There’s no such thing as totally farmed eel as they all start off in the wild, so I leave them alone as they need all the help they can get.
To get top-notch fish in London when you eat out, J Sheekey’s is always great when you can afford it. Mark Hix too, always has fantastic fish. Mackerel is my favourite fish in the world but it needs to be fresh, quivering in your hand. Lemon sole too is a favourite when slid from a buttery pan and shellfish, I’d be weeping on a rock without them. A huge bowl of River Severn cockles or spider crabs to pick over or razor clams always makes me happy. Open the wine and beat the mayonnaise. Go Fish!
