Best fishmonger: The Fish Plaice
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Your support makes all the difference.I'm lucky to live in Brixham, Devon, home to some of the best seafood in the country. The fleet here is diverse, we have beam trawlers catching our valuable flatfish, potters, divers, netters and handliners and the market sees about 40 species of wonderful fish and shellfish everyday.
One of the buyers you will see there every morning, hovering over the best boxes of dayboat fish, is Bob Gibson, who runs The Fish Plaice in Paignton. He isn't buying for restaurants, shops or supermarkets, it's just for his wonderful fishmongers. His early-morning buying skill will be rewarded with a van full of the very best of the morning's auction; then it's off to the shop to be sold by his wife, Tracey, and son, Jordan.
Bob is a proper fishmonger, a real craftsman with a long history in this now very complicated world of buying the best sustainably caught species he can and preparing it for sale at a price his customers can afford. There are no fancy sauces, anchovies or canned tuna on sale here: this is a fishmonger as it should be, a man you can trust to buy the best fish he can and sell it to you with honesty, integrity and great skill – every community should have one.
1 Victoria Street, Paignton, Devon, 01803 526595
Runners-up
The Scallop Shell Garry Rosser was one of my chefs and he has followed the passion he had for seafood into his very own shop – it's one of the best operations I've seen.
White Row Farm, Beckington, Somerset, 01373 831641
The Fish Deli at Ashburton A real destination for the fish lover in this picturesque town.
7 East St, Ashburton, Devon, 01364 654 833
Selfridges I visit the fish counter whenever I'm in London and it's always fascinating – they have Alaskan crabs, blue crabs, giant prawns ...
400 Oxford Street, London W1, 0800 123 400
Mitch Tonks runs The Seahorse, Dartmouth, 01803 835147
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