Why are uk supermarkets so rubbish at fish?!

[frogsoup]

The first picture is of our local sainburys fish counter at about 7.30pm on Thursday evening - monumentally crap, right? It looks like the kind of fish counter you'd expect up some mountain, 500 miles from the sea, where the only available transport is by horse and cart. The second is from a Spanish Carrefour (copied randomly from spanishfoodblog) and looks pretty much like every large supermarket in France and Spain that I've ever seen - ie fully stocked with a mouthwatering range of incredible fresh fish and shellfish. Even at their best UK fish counters are usually pretty shit. We don't have a single fishmonger locally either, despite living in a city of 125,000 people, less than 50 miles from a major port. WTF is wrong with uk supermarket buyers?!

The best and omly place around here to buy fish is down the docks each morning. Super early.

However I rarely buy from there as dont feel confident prepping it.

I suppose it’s quite expensive and wasteful if no one buys it. I like fish but admittedly can’t be arsed with all the bones etc so just tend to have it in restaurants. It takes a while for the supermarket staff to clean the fish, generally I’d rather just pick something up than hang around waiting. Many people I meet don’t like fish, and my DC won’t eat it unless it’s fishfingers.

I love fish but with kids my cooking focuses on stuff that won't suffer if I'm distracted at a crucial moment. So fish fillets are out, though I could do a fish stew more often.
I live in London with a huge Eastern and Southern European population so my Sainsburys has lots of fish (though not by 7pm), especially in the run up to Christmas where the fresh salmons are piled up and each gets a name card.

I was in a French seaside town in the summer and the seafood was great (not cheap), but apart from local tomatoes (expensive) and olives (cheap), all the fruit and veg was both hideously expensive and poor quality. A good reason to copy the locals and live on excellent local cheap wine, cheese, seafood and olives.

well the UK supermarket photo shows most of the fish has been bought. Not too surprising by 7:30 pm and shows we do buy a lot of fish

I also agree with pp that fruit and veg in France tends to be very expensive and crap quality

It makes me sad too. I LOVE fish and would probably be pescatarian if supermarkets had better fish. I used to go to a market for fish but the stalls all went.
My local butcher has rabbit though, cheap as anything, so that's good. I would prefer to eat only fish and game rather than farmed animals.

I think supermarkets in the U.K. are rubbish compared to Europe. Go into any Coop or Migros in Italy or Switzerland and they are full of fantastic food, huge cheese selection, so much nicer fresh fruit and veg.

Venice has some amazing fresh fish stalls, and fruit and veg stalls they are so lucky!

Depends where you are from in the UK a bit ... DM lives right on coast - most restaurants serve fish of some description , lots of fish and chip shops , a fishmonger van that goes around and has for years , specialist fishmongers ... usually queues out the door . DGrandmother (very, very rural Scottish) lives on a diet of it - crab, sea bass, mussels, sole, pilchards and sardines , rollmops , kippers for breakfast ... think as her generation is going (she’s 78) eating habits are changing . She still eats kidneys, oxtail, mutton, spam, tinned meat, dumplings, steamed puddings etc , elmlea or milk instead of cream ... stuff that’s not eaten half as much nowadays ...

When I worked in hospital (also very coastal) they usually did fish once a day of some sort as well . Could get white fish with cheese sauce , smoked haddock in milk , salmon/tuna salad or rollmops and salad . Fried fish every Friday . If patients didn’t want whatever was on the menu they had an endless stock of fish and chips as well ... Usually very popular !!

Asda has an impressive fish counter and usually so does Tesco. Sainsbury round here is much smaller than both, so is the fish counter.

There is no comparison between Spanish and English culture and Spain uses far more fish than us. Yabu.

"fruit and veg in France tends to be very expensive and crap quality"

Oh my goodness, I don't know which France you have visited but it definitely isn't the same one as me! I am genuinely baffled as to how one could get that impression. Maybe by only looking in Paris in November? Certainly nowhere south of Paris past about May...

I really should have taken a picture of that sainsburys counter at lunchtime to show how limited the choice is even at its best.

"Spain uses far more fish than us."

Well yes, that was kind of my point. Why? We live on a smallish island, it would hardly be a stretch to imagine a food culture that included fish on the same level as Spain. It's a real loss that we don't.

(Also, this isn't aibu...)

Why? We live on a smallish island, it would hardly be a stretch to imagine a food culture that included fish on the same level as Spain. It's a real loss that we don't.

Spain still has a serious fishing industry. The UK's fishing industry has long since declined. Just look at previously busy fishing towns like Fleetwood - the number of active fishing boats/trawlers is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.

I would love to see a vast array of fish in the supermarket in this country but it’s unlikely to happen, I was lucky that I grew up in Bury where there is a really fantastic fish market but sadly am at the other end of the country and the available variety of fish and seafood is minimal. I suspect partly because it is so bloody expensive and partly it’s not as popular here so ends up wasted.

I was thrilled to get 2 fresh Dover soles the other day for £1 each after their reduction! I don’t have a problem preparing a fish from whole, i think it puts a lot of people off though.

OP it is the same where I live. The nearest fishing town is only 25 min away by car, and there is only one (crap) fishmonger in my city of over 100,000 inhabitants.

Morrison's is ok for freshness, but the choice is limited (cod, haddock, salmon, prawns, crab if you're lucky). Our Sainsbury's doesn't even have a fish counter

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Spain still has a serious fishing industry. 'The UK's fishing industry has long since declined. Just look at previously busy fishing towns like Fleetwood - the number of active fishing boats/trawlers is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.'

This is kind of ironic given that local fishermen near me will tell you that one reason for the collapse of our fishing industry is the EU and big trawlers from the rest of Europe coming and fishing our seas to a wasteland.
I don't know enough to know how much truth there is in this...time will tell if Brexit makes any difference.

From my experience working on fish counters in supermarkets for many years it’s possibly that fish just isn’t as convient as meat. Almost everything we were doing was trying to make fish easier; bake in the bag, prepared reciepes and marinades etc. People were afraid of certain fish, not knowing now to cook it, or not wanting bones etc. This might have just been the demographic of my stores as well however it seems most fish counter customers are older, rarely had people under 25/30 buying anything other than shellfish. Also had a lot of people only willing to buy caught fish not farmed, local fish not Greek etc, so at certain times of the year people who want fish just aren’t buying it. So for some reason fish cooking is just a dying art?

I actually like the fact that in the UK they will bone, gut and fillet fish for you without huffing and rolling their eyes like my local fishmonger does!

That’s obviously not a usual fish counter, since it’s not even full 🤣

I have to say alternatively I hate seeing the fish counter in whole foods which is huge and piled high- there must be so much wastage, it’s disgusting.

This is where I buy fish.

I would choose to eat fresh fish every day and when I'm in some other countries I try to do this. For me buying it here is the price and it's just too expensive. I try to buy when it's reduced in Sainsburys but can never afford full price now. So to get my fill of fish I have to rest to buying frozen from Iceland or Aldi. It's fine but not how I'd choose to eat

OP, if you have a Waitrose near you, they do 20% off their fish counter every Friday either in store or online www.waitrose.com/ecom/shop/browse/groceries/fresh_and_chilled/chilled_fish_and_seafood/fish_counter. Their prices for whole fish are quite reasonable and the fish is nice quality.