What to Eat in a Seaside Town (According to the People Who Live There)

Every seaside town has two food scenes. The first is the one facing the water, with laminated menus and a view you pay extra for. The second is the one a few streets back, where the portions are bigger, the prices are kinder, and the people eating there all seem to know each other's names. If you want to eat well by the sea, you want the second one.

I learned this the hard way, on a trip where I spent three days eating mediocre calamari with a spectacular view before a local took pity on me and pointed me toward a bakery in a side street that had been there for sixty years. The queue out the door told me everything I needed to know.

The Dishes Worth Seeking Out

Start with the humble things. Fish and chips, done properly, is still one of the great coastal meals — crisp batter, flaky white fish, chips that are soft in the middle and crunchy at the edges, and enough vinegar to make your eyes water. The best ones are usually from a shop with a queue and a limited menu. If they also sell other things, be suspicious.

Look for whatever is landed that day. A crab sandwich on thick brown bread, made with meat picked that morning, is a thing of beauty. So is a bowl of mussels in cider or cream, served with bread to mop up the liquor. In fishing towns, ask where the fish came from. If the answer is "the boat down the harbour," you are in the right place.

Do not overlook the bakery. Coastal bakeries often have local specialities — a heavy fruit cake, a saffron bun, a pasty with a crimped edge that tells you which county you are in. Buy one for now and one for the walk. And if you see a shop selling ice cream made with local milk, get a cone. It is almost always better than the fancy place on the promenade.

How to Find the Good Stuff

Follow the locals. Look for where the fishing crews eat after their shift, where the shopkeepers go on their lunch break, where the queue forms before opening time. Ask at the harbour office or the chandlery — people who work on the water know exactly where to eat.

Avoid anywhere with a menu in three languages and a photograph of every dish. Avoid anywhere with a person outside trying to wave you in. And avoid anywhere that describes its fish as "fresh" without naming it. Fresh fish has a name. It is on the board. It might be hake, it might be plaice, it might be something you have never heard of. Order it anyway.

The best meal I ever had by the sea cost less than a round of drinks and was eaten off a paper plate on a harbour wall, watching the boats come in. There was no view to pay for, no laminated menu, no waiter. Just perfect fish, salt air, and the sound of rigging in the wind. That is what seaside eating is really about. Find the queue. Join it. You will not be sorry.