If anywhere can do fish properly, it is a restaurant with its own fishmongers, such as Fish Shop in the village of Ballater, to the east of the Cairngorms in Aberdeenshire. Simply the fact that you can see gloriously fresh Scottish day-boat fish in the adjoining shop window is reassuring. Friends of this column will know my thoughts on speciality seafood restaurants, and I am weary of fishy tales dreamed up by marketeers, promising “locally sourced” swimming things cooked by allegedly highly trained poissoniers. I’ll translate: “We will lug some Honduran prawns out of the deep-freeze and serve them with mayo mixed with ketchup. Please overlook the decor, which comprises shelfloads of nautical tat from Dunelm.”
Fish restaurants don’t have to be beside the sea, and I don’t care if they’re metropolitan, either. What matters is the sourcing and the staff’s knowledge of their goods. At the Fish Shop counter that morning, they had Peterhead halibut, Scrabster monkfish, Cape Wrath oysters, Shetland plaice fillets and various seaweeds. Fish Shop will not cook you tuna, or sink to serving warm-water prawns, and even the tinned fish is sourced in the UK. In fact, they don’t even serve fish and chips, so as not to upset the local chippy.
