Given that JPRestaurants alone sold over 4,500 bass dishes that year, you can see why farmed or wild-imported bass is predominant on local restaurant menus.

We always mark our bass as “wild” when local or day boat UK fish is on the menu, and our team will always be open and transparent when we serve imported or farmed fish. We tend to serve the wild bass pan-fried with simpler sauces to let the taste shine through.

There is an easy way to tell if the fish you are eating in a local restaurant is farmed: wild bass must be over 42 cm long, so any whole fish or whole fish filet you see on your plate will be farmed.

It is cheaper than better-tasting bass, turbot, brill, cod and gilt-head, but large catches are mainly are sold to France. It only occasionally appears on Jersey restaurant menus.

Recently, there have been small catches of large gilt-head bream by local fishermen. Most are sold directly to retail customers, but some has occasionally ended up on our Fish of the Day menus. As with bass, if you see a whole fish or whole fish filet on your plate, it’s more than likely to be farmed.

Very little local brill is sold to restaurants, usually ending up on a retail fish counter. This is because only one trawler lands brill locally for direct sale to retail customers. The brill we serve comes predominantly from the southwest English Channel although plenty is caught in Guernsey’s deeper waters.

Cockles are available on most tides, higher up the beach.

Only praires are landed commercially (generally by dredging) but only very rarely, and they usually don’t make it onto restaurant tables.

Cockles and clams collected on the beach don’t meet current food safety laws for restaurants, as they are not treated. Our live clams come from France.

Quality can vary from very good fresh and fresh-frozen large meaty white filets, to grey and flabby cheaper fish that have been stored in a fishing trawler’s hold for several weeks before sale. You get what you pay for!

Jersey has a connection to cod: in the 16^th to 19^th centuries, a Jersey fishing fleet caught cod off Canada and salted it, before returning to sell to markets in the Caribbean and around Europe. So there’s a local link, but the cod on your plate is not local.

Contrary to popular belief, frozen cod is often better-tasting and of superior quality to fresh, so we are happy to source high-quality frozen cod for our restaurants.

Most crab we serve is local, but at certain times of the year supplies run out and we top up with fresh-picked crab from Devon.

Local crab catches have dropped significantly over the last five years, but that is to do with the number of crabs around our shores, not the lack of fishermen targeting them with their pots.

We have more than enough local crab to supply local restaurants and food retailers, but for supply chain reasons live crab is exported and most local supermarkets don’t stock Jersey crab, so a significant quantity of crab is imported into Jersey.

The local catches are generally caught in pots (75%) with the remainder in nets.

A prized catch, even more expensive than lobster, it has a firmer white flesh and was often the star of restaurant banquets in the 1950s.

Like the other four “king” fish, local dover sole are rarely available on restaurant menus.  They command a high price in the UK and France: it’s a premium fish, with a higher end fish price like turbot.

Not available in local waters, all haddock sold locally comes from the UK. The better quality fish is often fresh-frozen.

Hake is a firm fish that can take a rich sauce, but don’t be persuaded by anyone inferring it’s local.

It doesn’t live in local waters, but rather cold waters of the far north Atlantic.

Catches have increased from around 40 kgs to 400 kgs in last few years but most is landed in France with a few static net caught John Dory occaisionally sold direct by smaller fishing boats to independent restaurants or the general public from fish stalls.

If you see John Dory on a Jersey restaurant menu, there is a good chance imported from the UK, where it is caught in the English Channel.

Sourced almost exclusively in Scottish waters as none are caught around Jersey, they are very expensive and only occasionally appear on our menus.

All lemon sole in Jersey comes from the UK, as it is rarely caught locally.

Every lobster you eat in Jersey will be local, as unlike in the UK and Europe, Canadian and US lobster can’t be imported to Jersey.

Despite its high local price tag (which is set by the French markets, who import most of the local catch), it’s cheaper on menus in Jersey than it is across the water in France.

Nice catches do appear occaisonally in local fishmongers but for the same reasons as other fish don’t often make it to restaurant menus. You will often see smoked mackerel (filet or paté) on menus but this is most likely imported from U.K. smokeries.

The local inshore mackerel are also sometimes a little smaller than most served in Jersey restaurants, which come from Brixham market like much of our other imported fish.

Fresh and cooked carefully, mackerel is as good as any of the local five “kings”, even if it’s less-loved due to its oily stronger flavour and is therefore a slower seller on restaurant menus.

A fish that can take some spice and the star of our monkfish curry and monkfish scampi, both top sellers at Oyster Box.

We tend to have mussels on the menu until the end of May as the quality drops after then. When we can’t source them locally, they come from Scotland.

Most octopus on local menus is imported from the Atlantic coast of the Iberian peninsula. We’ve recently added an octopus dish to the Oyster Box menu.

A good spring tide is necessary for a large catch.

You may see them in local fishmongers occasionally, but they rarely end up on restaurant menus.

Our native oysters may have been over-fished in the 19^th century and are no longer a viable commercial option being rare in our waters, but Jersey “pacific” oysters from the Jersey Oyster Company are some of the finest in the world. We sell 75,000 a year to our customers who can’t get enough, and Jersey exports millions around the world each year.

Plaice is available locally and there is a small local commercial catch as they come further inshore than turbot and brill. But the Jersey plaice on your menu probably hasn’t come from Jersey.

Plaice can be good, but it’s a delicate fish that easily spoils and can be less tasty when very fresh or too old, so it doesn’t appear on our menus very often.

They are much smaller than the prawns you see on local menus but delicious. The French prize them where they are called  crevettes roses  or “bouquets” but they are rare and the large ones which can be caught from August in Brittany are more expensive than lobster.  At low Spring tides you can be lucky to catch them “shrimping” around rocky outcrops but they don’t make it onto local menus.

Most prawns sold in Jersey and on island restaurant menus are farmed in Asia or from cold-water fisheries in the North Atlantic and they are generally imported frozen. Some large tiger prawns are fresh.

At JPRestaurants, we know how unsustainably-sourced some imported Asian prawns are, so we go to great lengths to ensure we buy high quality imported prawns from sustainable farms or cold waterprawns from sustainable fisheries in the North Atlantic.

Names can be confusing. Prawns in Scotland are what we call langoustine. The Americans call Prawns,  Shrimp. Shrimps to us are smaller prawns and indeed the only other native shrimps around Jersey are grey shrimps, which you may see as potted-shrimp on a menu but will probably have come from Morecambe Bay in the U.K.

The French call them crevette grises and they can be caught law water fishing on sandy beaches on the East Coast of Jersey.

They are traditionally caught low-water fishing on spring tides in Jersey, and are eaten fried in butter, but they don’t make it to many local restaurant menus. An acquired taste, they pop up quite often in restaurant dishes elsewhere in the world.

We serve local and imported Red Mullet at Oyster Box and Banjo when it’s available.

Some salmon farms have a terrible impact on the environment. For this reason and despite its popularity, we have reduced the number of salmon dishes on our menus. We now sell only smoked salmon, that we buy from a single smoker who uses sustainably-farmed fish.

Cornwall’s large pilchard fishery has had a re-brand; now calling them Cornish Sardines.

Very occasionally, and usually in the winter in bad weather when the local divers can’t go to sea, we buy local dredged scallops.

Known as Queenies in the Ile of Man, petoncles in Brittany and vanneaux in Normandy, we’d sell them if we could get more.

It’s often a by-catch of the local spider crab fishing nets, and we serve it when its available.

Skate is a traditional food name covering various rays (undulate, thornback and spotted but not skate, the latter is threatend and to be avoided) that appear on Jersey menus. The fish needs careful handling and preparation to ensure it does not smell of ammonia when it arrives at the table.

Around 400 kg has been caught annually in recent years by local fishermen, but little is available in local wholesale markets, so virtually all the squid on local menus is imported.

All tuna on local menus is imported. We use pole and line caught yellowfin tuna, which is on the list of least concern.

Some local farmed turbot is available – we choose not to sell it, so any wild turbot on our, and other restaurant, menus in Jersey will come from the English Channel (unless we are lucky enough to source any locally.)