Aegean fish: what to order

What actually swims here

Four names cover most menus. Tsipoura is sea bream, lavraki is sea bass, fagri is red porgy and mylokopi is the fish sold in English as umbrina or meagre. Beyond those you will meet sardines, red mullet, and in late summer the small fried fish that Greeks eat by the handful.

The Aegean is not a rich sea. It is deep, clear and relatively poor in nutrients, which means fewer fish but firm, clean-tasting ones. That poverty is why Greek fish cookery is so restrained: there is nothing to cover up.

Wild or farmed, honestly

Greece is one of the largest producers of farmed bream and bass in the Mediterranean, and a good farmed fish beats a tired wild one every time. Wild fish costs more because it is caught in smaller numbers, not because it is automatically better.

What matters more is how long ago it came out of the water. Clear eyes, firm flesh, a smell of sea rather than of fish. Any decent restaurant will show you the whole fish before it is cooked, and you should say yes when they offer.

How Greeks cook it

Whole, over coals, with almost nothing on it. The dressing is ladolemono, which is olive oil and lemon whisked together with oregano and salt, spooned over the fish as it comes off the grill. That is the entire technique and it has not needed improving.

The second tradition is frying, usually the smaller fish, and the third is the fish soup called kakavia, made by fishermen from whatever did not sell. Anything more elaborate is modern, ours included.

Ordering fish sold by the kilo

Larger fish are priced by weight, which catches visitors out. The menu shows a price per kilo, the waiter brings the fish to the table, and the bill depends on what you chose. Ask what the fish weighs before you agree, and ask what a portion looks like for your table.

Nobody is trying to trick you, but the system assumes you know it. A single bream is usually right for one or two people; anything above a kilo is a table's worth.

The modern version

Contemporary Greek kitchens have added raw and cured preparations to the grill and the pan: carpaccio, ceviche, cured fillets with citrus. Our own menu works in both directions, and the six-course tasting menu moves through several of them in one evening.

Whatever you order, drink Assyrtiko with it. The reasons are in our note on Greek wine, but the short version is that a wine grown on a volcanic island in the same sea tends to know what to do with the fish from it.

When the fish is not from here

European rules require a restaurant to tell you when fish has been frozen, usually with a small symbol or a line at the bottom of the menu. It is not a scandal. A well-frozen fish caught properly can beat a fresh one that spent three days in a van.

What you are entitled to is a straight answer. Ask where it came from and whether it was frozen, and judge the restaurant by whether the reply is comfortable or evasive rather than by the answer itself.

One habit worth copying from Greek tables: order the fish for the table rather than one each. A single larger fish, shared, is almost always better cooking than four small fillets, and it costs less per person. Ask for it filleted at the table if you would rather not do the work yourself.