For me this is the best time of year for fish and seafood. The mussels are plump, the oysters are full and give a clean taste of the sea. All the flatties are in perfect form, their flesh is firm and their yield is at its best!
If we’re lucky there’s a good show of those stunning red mullet caught on day boats off the south west. Like everything, so much depends on weather.
I know that just about everything is available year round nowadays, but I’m a bit of a traditionalist. So as soon as September arrives and the schools go back our shop changes quite dramatically. We slow right down for august as most of our customers are away.
Gone are the minimalist displays of beautiful but quite sparse fish, thinly spread on large ice counters, and bang!! The shop comes back to life with enormous displays of gleaming fish and shellfish.
Big piles of shiny mussels and clams, hand-dived scallops, crawfish, lobsters, crabs, sea urchins all painstakingly opened and ready to devour.
Thick chunks of cod and halibut, piles of stiff line caught bass, maybe some wild giltheads if we’re lucky, and if we’re even luckier, a few couches bream( known as Cornish pinkies in our shop). Fat turbot and brill vying for space amongst piles of Dovers and lemons and hopefully some of those deep red red mullet, every scale intact and looking alive.
The shop is buzzing with customers, fishmongers, deliveries coming in, the phone ringing all day. Now I’m in my happy place.
Rex Golsmith
The Chelsea Fishmonger
