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The freezer has had a dramatic effect on the supply of fish and shellfish from far-flung corners of the globe. You can pretty much buy any fish from around the world at any time. A boat can fish in deep seas with huge nets for weeks on end. It can hoover up whole shoals and sort, fillet and freeze until it’s bursting from the seams before returning to port to sell its catch to the manufacturers of fish fingers and frozen fish pies. And while this may mean that we can fill our freezers with cheap fish, the real cost, apart from the obvious damage to the ocean’s fish stocks, is to the taste.

Fresh fish, caught in the least damaging way possible (both to the fish and the sea) using a hook and line, or tidal nets, transported back to port and sold the same day, simply has a superior taste to anything you can find in the frozen food section. Fresh fish does not smell of fish, it smells of the sea and this flavour flows through the body to the fillet.

Our fish and shellfish are delivered fresh every day, sometimes twice a day and, in the case of our shellfish, still alive. This is not because we buy in particularly large quantities, it’s because we want our suppliers to deliver the freshest fish possible. So when you are next at the fishmongers or standing at the fish counter at your local supermarket, just ask a simple question: is it fresh? If the answer is no, then go elsewhere.