Something fishy

This review was first published in June 1999

Buy this book online from Amazon.co.uk

William Black, author, with his wife Sophie Grigson, of the book Fish is not chef at Fish! which opened recently in Borough Market, but he is consultant. Fish with the screamer (exclamation mark) is owned by Tony Allan and Ronnie Truss, founders of the wholesalers Cutty's, a fact which has made many people wonder why no financial benefit from the elimination of the middle man is being passed on to the customer or, if such a lot is going to be charged, why isn't there a better wine list and cloth napkins to replace the bitty paper ones. However, the product is blamelessly fresh, usually tactfully cooked, and it is dished up with some of the advice, information warnings and homilies with which William Black prefaces what is his splendid primer on the subject.

I looked up skate because I like to cook skate at home and discovered the reason for my affinity with the creature. "They are an unadventurous group of fish, and tend to sit camouflaged on the seabed ... Migration and long-distance swimming is not one of their favourite pastimes ... They have evolved a clever way of breathing without opening their mouths..." There is much else to be discovered and inspired by through the sort of writing that dispenses with what many see as the mystique about fish buying and cooking. The photographs, sadly, tend towards the lurid and the use of colour pages seems to have no discernible function.

Fish! the restaurant has a shop alongside. A relatively economical tactic would be to buy some prepared fillets and the book, but you would miss out on dining on the terrace looking towards Southwark Cathedral.

FISH, by Sophie Grigson and William Black, (Headline, £20).

Fish!
Cathedral Street, Borough Market, Southwark, SE1