and range. As the UK’s leading seafood chef and authority of fish Rick Stein put it, ‘It’s a pity some chains are still taking fish from the quayside to the multiple depot and then into the store. And it’s ridiculous when you read that some produce has travelled 1,000 miles to the shop … I believe the quality and range of supermarket fish counters still needs a lot of work. I find some of them boring, given the predominance of farmed salmon.’
Take a couple of minutes to appraise the typical supermarket wet fish counter and you’ll see what he means. The first thing that hits you is a preponderance of farmed (salmon, trout), as opposed to wild fish. Increasingly, even species we presume are wild – like cod, halibut, turbot, tuna, bass and bream – are being farmed. Supermarkets say that farmed fish is just a response to shortage of wild stocks, but that is a partial truth. Supermarkets like farmed fish because it can be bought and sold like ball bearings. It is immune to the whims of the sea and so it fits in with supermarkets’ centralised, highly automated, nationwide buying systems. It takes only a couple of conversations between a supermarket fish buyer and Scottish farmed salmon supplier, or a Greek sea bass farmer, to arrange a supply of fish of a standard weight in all stores, at a low price that can be guaranteed for a substantial period of time. By contrast, fleeting, ever-changing supplies of wild fish are a pain in the backside for supermarkets. The catch changes each day; prices and availability fluctuate. Supplies of fresh wild fish are inherently local, patchy and highly changeable. Supermarkets’ buying requirements, on the other hand, are national and fixed.
Supermarkets have trialled schemes supplying locally caught fish bypassing central distribution. In 2003, Safeway found that such an initiative in the south-west of England raised sales by 27 per cent. But this method of supply is not typical. Usually, fish and shellfish must pass through one of a few regional distribution centres (RDCs) irrespective of where the fish is to be sold. This is the opposite of the old fishmonger’s goal of ‘From the sea to the pan as fast as we can’. In the classic supermarket system, haddock landed and smoked at Peterhead in the far north-east of Scotland may well be sent to a distribution centre in England before being despatched to Scottish stores. Whereas traditional fishmongers bought from merchants operating out of local ports and sold what they got as soon as possible, supermarkets routinely transport fish up and down the country. In this way, they have lengthened the time that fish takes to arrive on the slab, not shortened it. And for supermarkets to be interested in doing business with a particular supplier of wild fish, that supplier must be able to guarantee a large enough volume to supply all, or at least a large number, of stores. So the supplier may need to buy in fish from other geographically distant sources to meet the supermarket’s requirements.
A common characteristic of supermarket wet fish counters is that a large proportion of fish has been defrosted from frozen. Most consumers assume, not unreasonably, that because fish and shellfish are lying on the slab, not in a deep freeze, they are fresh. Read the small text on the label – it may not be obvious unless you look quite carefully – and you’ll see the words ‘previously frozen’. Though arguments rage about the effect that freezing has on fish, gastronomic experts agree that frozen is a poor second best to fresh. By buying frozen fish, supermarkets get to have their cake and eat it. They have the ease of buying and transporting fish frozen, without any of the hassle or expense necessarily involved in handling a sensitive product like chilled fresh fish which, to be sold at its best, needs as short and direct a supply chain as possible. Meanwhile, the less than vigilant shopper, who fails to notice the ‘previously frozen’ small print and refreezes the fish at home, is guaranteed a doubly disappointing, and possibly microbiologically dodgy, eating experience.
Padding out of the fish counter comes in the form of the growing number of ‘exotic’ species such as tilapia, hoki and marlin which sell, somewhat cheekily, under the label ‘air freighted for freshness’, though anyone with an experienced eye for fish could tell you that they look exceptionally matt and flaccid, having lost their sparkle after their long journey from oceans on the other side of the world. Now 70 per cent of fish consumed in the UK originates in foreign waters, a figure that clearly reflects our supermarkets’ sourcing policies.
Check out your supermarket’s wet fish counter of an afternoon, and you can bet on finding ‘special offer’ bargain fish that’s been marked down for quick sale. Whether it’s cod or skate or swordfish or tuna, after one look at its tired and lustreless state, you’ll instantly appreciate why the staff behind the counter might be having problems shifting it. ‘When I walk into a supermarket with a fish counter I can just tell by the smell alone that the fish is not fresh by my standards and the look only confirms that,’ one experienced fishmonger told me. He explained that when it comes to supplies of wild fish such as haddock, cod, whiting and so on, there are various grades on offer at a fish auction. This is done not by size but by age: the freshest fish commands the highest price. ‘The supermarkets buy the poorer quality fish because they consider the best fish is too expensive. The reason why many of their fillets often contain bones is because they like to buy ‘‘block’’ fish, that’s cheaper fish that have been filleted at speed. It’s hard to see why supermarkets buy fish from all over the world to sell fresh when they can’t even sell fish from the UK fresh,’ he remarked.
One young, enthusiastic Surrey fishmonger, Rex Goldsmith, gave me an insight into the difference between fish from the independent fish trade and that from supermarkets. ‘I drum into my assistant, ‘‘If you wouldn’t buy it – don’t sell it.’’ I always go for quality,’ he told me. On a sunny spring day, the selection on his slab was as vibrantly fresh as the weather: Whitstable oysters, Cornish cod, brill, skate, sole, Scottish mussels, south-coast line-caught sea bass and west coast scallops. None of it had been frozen. It was the sort of selection that gives you ideas and inspires you to cook.
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