If you want good cheap fish then you need to head to the coast in England.
My mum living in Saffron Walden in north Essex, it is a short hours drive to the Island of Mersea in the muddy estuary of the River Colne, near Colchester.
Australians don’t appreciate properly this kind of muddy coastline preferring golden sands. But this is coast with sole and bloody amazing native oysters.
Perhaps my health is returning or I draw the strength from this land of Harry, King George, Ray Winston and Vinny Jones.
Jellied eels.
Some prat is blocking this tiny road in his ostentatiously large Mercedes. “Oi! You muppet,” I exclaim before dragging the driver out by the scruff of his neck. It doesn’t take much to wedge the head of this quivering mass of flesh in his car door and slam it several times. Nice. And it serves him right for wearing a track suit in public.
By the time we arrive at The Company Shed my mood is lighter and the fact we wait an hour for a table while snacking on a polystyrene container of cockles while my gold crowns glint in the sun.
You have to bring your own wine and bread to the shed, perhaps the most parred down and basic restaurant you can find.
What we eat is simple. Two seafood platters, scallops, a dozen ozone intense briny native oysters and some razor clams cooked with bacon, an exercise in texture more than anything else.
The platter contains cockles, sweet tiny peeled prawns, smokes mackerel, dressed crab and what I feel is really stupid – Thai Tiger Prawns and a New Zealand green-lipped mussel (mussels are a month fro season).
Oh, and how could I resist the pale segments of eel in a sparkling and irresistible jelly.
The Company Shed is also a fishmonger with shark, seabass, slimy slimy eels, mackerel, scallops and best of all Dover Sole.
We buy enough sole for three and the whole bill comes to 57 pounds – that’s about 15 quid each or $40 for an orgy of sea food.
5 Comments