Fish and Shellfish

In five years we have seen a food revolution taking place here in this country and nowhere has this been more apparent than when dealing with fish and seafood, as more and more people stop eating meat completely or, more commonly, exclude beef, lamb and pork from their diets. When our column began in 1992, the difficulty in finding really fresh fish around the country was nothing short of a national disgrace. The quality of what some supermarkets offered then – and, in some cases it has to be said, to this day – defied description, other than in terms that might have been deemed actionable. One of the most encouraging aspects of our changing food perceptions has been an outcrop of new fishmongers opening on high streets, totally against the national trend of widespread closure of specialist food shops – a direct result of supermarkets’ failure to supply really fresh fish.