Chelsea Fishmonger The Sea, The Sea: Open Mondays From 9 am

The Sea, The Sea runs its fish shop from 243 Pavilion Road, London SW1X 0AW, and it opens on Mondays. The shop trades Monday from 09:00 to 17:00, Tuesday to Saturday from 09:00 to 19:00 and Sunday from 11:00 to 16:00, with one catch: on Sundays and from 18:00 to 19:00 on Tuesday to Saturday it offers only collection of pre-portioned, pre-ordered fish.

Alex Hunter, a co-founder of the Bonnie Gull seafood restaurants, opened The Sea, The Sea on 27 April 2019 at 174 Pavilion Road. The name comes from Iris Murdoch's Booker Prize-winning 1978 novel. From the start it was a fish shop and deli by day and a seafood and Champagne bar by night, squeezed into roughly 500 square feet.

In 2026 the business moved about eight metres across the street to its current address, a building five times the size of the original, according to trade press coverage. The new site spreads over three floors with a basement kitchen. The ground floor is still a fishmonger during the day, a first-floor bistro seats 40, and a 28-seat terrace sits out front.

The shop's core promise is speed. Its website says fish is delivered from sea to store in under 24 hours in the company's own vehicles. Reviews of the new site describe the catch as coming from small boats in Cornwall and Scotland, and Hunter has long supplied ambitious London kitchens; Ikoyi and Kol are named as customers.

Hunter sold the wholesale business to Reach Food Group in early 2025 but, by his own account, kept a consulting role and direct relationships with suppliers. He has argued that this lets fish skip several middlemen on its way to the counter, which helps on price. For a shopper, the practical meaning is a counter stocked with the same quality of fish that top restaurant kitchens buy.

The detail that sets this counter apart is the dry-ageing. In the new ground-floor room, a central ice-display table is surrounded by dry-ageing cabinets showing house-aged fish. Ageing whole fish, much like ageing beef, removes surface moisture and concentrates flavour, giving crisper skin when cooked. Ask the fishmonger which fish in the cabinets is ready and how many days it has aged.

Aged fish is not for every recipe. It is at its best simply grilled or roasted, where you taste the deeper flavour and the crackling skin. For a delicate poach, a curry or a fish pie, the aged cuts are wasted, so buy fresh fish from the ice table instead and keep the aged one for a dinner where it is the star of the plate.

When the shop closes, the ice table turns into a seafood bar for 10 people in the evening. The raw bar focuses on snacks, sashimi, oysters and caviar, while the first-floor bistro, with a pitched ceiling designed to evoke the hull of a fishing boat, cooks whole barbecued fish and seasonal small plates. Reviewers of the new room have singled out pickled Fowey mussels, grilled Cornish lobster, aged John Dory and oysters with cucumber and apple vinegar.

Head chef Nick Marsden, whose CV includes Pitt Cue and The Laughing Heart, runs the kitchen. Reservations for the bistro and raw bar are taken by phone or online, the terrace welcomes walk-ins, and the restaurant charges £30 per head for late cancellations and no-shows, so cancel early if your plans change.

Hunter has said the bigger site lets the kitchen grill, fry and roast in ways the old 500 square foot shop never could, and he has talked about going big on seaweed. The plan he described is a range of ready-to-eat takeaway dishes that use seaweed, as an easy way to introduce it to people who would never buy a sheet of dulse on its own. If you see a seaweed salad or snack by the till, that is the idea in action.

The shop has always attracted attention from the style press as much as from cooks. Broadsheet headlined a feature with the line that fishmongers do not get more chic than The Sea, The Sea, and Country and Town House joked that if you do not love seafood, this is not your plaice. Expect Chelsea residents buying for supper, chefs dropping in, and visitors who came for the raw bar and leave with a bag of fish.

The collection-only windows are the thing to plan around. If you want to browse the counter and talk through options, come on a weekday morning, when the shop is in full retail mode from 09:00. If you are dropping by after work on a Tuesday to Saturday, order in advance, because the 18:00 to 19:00 hour is for pre-ordered, pre-portioned pick-ups only. The same rule applies on Sunday.

Delivery is the alternative. The online shop ships within a 7km radius of the Chelsea store and offers free local delivery on orders over £50. That radius covers much of west and central London, and it is the simplest route when you need fish for a dinner party but cannot reach Pavilion Road during shop hours.

Pavilion Road is a narrow mews-style street running behind Sloane Street, redeveloped by the Cadogan estate into a row of independent food shops and cafés. It is a pleasant place to string together a short food crawl before buying fish. Sloane Square and its Underground station are a few minutes' walk to the south.

For a longer walk, head south-west along the King's Road for shopping, or east into Belgravia's quieter squares. Do the fish last so it goes straight home to the fridge.

Address: The Sea, The Sea, 243 Pavilion Road, London SW1X 0AW. Fish shop hours: Monday 09:00 to 17:00, Tuesday to Saturday 09:00 to 19:00, Sunday 11:00 to 16:00, with collection-only service on Sundays and from 18:00 to 19:00 Tuesday to Saturday. Email: shop@theseathesea.net for the shop. Cash is accepted in the restaurant.

Ask the Karpo APP to plan a Chelsea evening with a Pavilion Road browse, a pre-ordered fish pick-up before 19:00 and a seat at the raw bar.