There’s a pattern I’ve watched play out at seafood counters for years. Someone walks in, scans the display for about four seconds, and reaches for one of the same five species they always buy. Atlantic Salmon. Snapper. King George Whiting. Kingfish. Bluefin Tuna. The rest of the display – and it’s often extraordinary – gets ignored. Not because it’s inferior. Because it’s unfamiliar.
That unfamiliarity doesn’t start at the fish shop. It starts in restaurants. Chefs gravitate toward species that portion consistently and can be sourced in volume through wholesale channels that prioritise yield and uniformity. What appears repeatedly on restaurant menus shapes what people ask for at the counter, which shapes what fishmongers’ stock, which reinforces what restaurants keep ordering. The species that don’t fit that cycle – seasonal, variable in size, caught by individual fishers in smaller quantities – get left out entirely. Not because they’re lesser. Because the system wasn’t built around them.
Seasonality is where this matters most at the counter. Southern Garfish has a genuine fresh season in South Australia – when it’s in, it’s one of the finest small fish you can buy. Outside that window, what’s labelled Garfish has almost certainly been frozen, and depending on where you’re shopping, whether it’s actually Australian Garfish is worth asking. Getting into the habit of asking – is this fresh, has it been frozen, is it Australian, is it in season – changes what you understand about the display in front of you.
Not every species you want will be in the display on every visit. That’s not a gap in the shop – it’s what genuine seafood looks like. Asking what came in today and what’s at its peak this week gets you access to the counter that most people never see.
Australian Salmon: Memory, Value, and a Misunderstood Name
I used to catch Australian Salmon off Rottnest Island – Salmon Bay, around Easter, when they’d run along the west side of the island. This is not Atlantic Salmon’s soft-fleshed cage-farmed cousin. It’s oil-rich and robust, with a depth of flavour that rewards heat rather than apologising for it. A well-handled Australian Salmon, Iki Jimi dispatched and iced immediately on the boat, at around ten-fifteen dollars a fish, represents outstanding value – the kind of fish that earns its place at the table on quality alone, not just price. Its oil content is also what farmed Kingfish used to offer before selective breeding smoothed it out.
Blue Eye Trevalla and Silver Trevally: Southern Waters, Serious Value
Blue Eye Trevalla is caught at depths of 200 to 900 metres on the southern continental shelf – the cold Southern Ocean upwelling of the Great Australian Bight, with fishers working out of Streaky Bay and Ceduna. These are the same waters that produce Southern Bluefin Tuna, which now sits on the IUCN Red List as Endangered. Blue Eye gives you the same density and richness, under quota management through AFMA, at a fraction of the conservation cost. The raw flesh runs pale pink to red-brown – it reads as a serious fish before you’ve done anything to it. Cooked, it turns pearl white and holds its structure without drying. Fair Seafood dry-ages it on site – one to two days produces skin-ready fillets for home cooks; three to five days produces sashimi and tartare-grade product that no supermarket can offer.
Silver Trevally comes from the Great Australian Bight off Ceduna – clean, cold, productive water that gives the fish a full, mouth-filling flavour with a sweetness and lingering depth that mild white fish simply don’t have. It peaks in spring and early summer. When handled Iki Jimi at catch for the sashimi market, the texture is firm and glassy in a way that places it in the same conversation as Hiramasa Kingfish. It suits the high heat of a charcoal BBQ and takes Mediterranean accompaniments – olives, tomato, capers – without the fish disappearing underneath them. At its seasonal peak from Ceduna, it’s one of the better-value fish in the country.
Ora King Salmon: Provenance in a Different Register
Ōra King Salmon is not the same conversation as cage-farmed Atlantic Salmon. It’s a King Salmon from the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand – fully traceable, handled with the same transparency as every other species Fair Seafood carries. The flesh is rich in a way that rewards low-temperature cooking. It’s a premium species priced accordingly, but the provenance story behind it is what justifies that price – not the name alone.
Barramundi: Wild Versus Farmed
Australia’s most recognised fish sits in a category of its own. Wild-caught barramundi is now significantly restricted – for good reason. Farmed operations like Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory produce consistent results, but the flavour is a different conversation to the wild fish. Worth understanding before you buy, and worth asking about at the counter.
Coral Trout: Worth Asking for by Name
Coral Trout doesn’t always make it to the display counter – it arrives when conditions allow and in quantities that don’t suit the predictable wholesale cycle. When Fair Seafood has it, it’s because a fisher worked for it. The flesh is firm-white and mild without the blandness that makes some white fish forgettable. It’s also the fish that prompts the right question at the counter: where was it caught, and by whom?
Nannygai: Snapper’s Better-Value Counterpart
Nannygai is the equivalent of Snapper in eating quality – firm-white, clean, with a depth that suits a wide range of cuisines – but it arrives at a price that makes the comparison embarrassing for Snapper. Score the skin diagonally before it goes near a hot surface or it cups and curls immediately. Year-round availability through Fair Seafood means there’s no excuse to default to the Snapper next to it.
Morwong: A Winter Fish in a Large Body
Morwong runs between 40 and 90 centimetres when caught – at that size, between 4.5 and 9 kilograms, this is not a fish you take home whole for a weeknight dinner for two. At the Fair Seafood counter, it comes as a centre cut or fillet. The reason to plan around it is the season: between May and August it carries noticeably more fat through the flesh, gaining a richness that the same fish filleted in February simply doesn’t have. Its white, flaky flesh sits in the same register as Snapper, but richer in the cooler months than Snapper ever reaches.
Gurnard and Ling: The Case for Steaming
Gurnard is one of the most striking-looking fish at the counter – angular, with a broad armoured head and fins that spread wide on ice. Most people walk past it. Some have bought it without knowing it: Gurnard occasionally appears labelled as Flathead, and if the price seems low for Flathead, that’s worth querying. Its flesh is firm and subtly sweet; steaming at 75 degrees Celsius keeps that sweetness fully present in a way that high heat doesn’t. Ling suits the same approach – firm white flesh that holds structure through steaming and reheats in a steam oven without meaningful quality loss. Neither cost what their quality warrants.
Coorong Mullet: A Story in the Flesh
Coorong Mullet is an autumn and winter species tied to an estuarine system that exists nowhere else in the world. This is not generic mullet – it’s shaped by the Murray-Darling system’s meeting with the Southern Ocean, and it carries that in the flesh. Whole fish on the bone, turned consistently on a moderate pan, peels away in long unbroken strips that a filleted piece can’t replicate. Abundant, fast-reproducing, available at its peak in the cooler months, and priced in a way that reflects none of what it delivers.
The Ask at the Counter
One more question worth forming the habit of asking: how was this fish dispatched? Iki Jimi – immediately spiking the brain and bleeding the fish at the point of capture – is used by fishers who understand that stress at the moment of death carries into the flesh. Lower lactic acid in the muscle, firmer texture, longer quality window. Not every fisher uses it. The ones who do are making a deliberate choice about what reaches your kitchen. Fair Seafood know which fishers those are.
So: stand at the counter and ask the questions. Is this an Australian species? Is it in season? Has it been frozen? Who is the fisher, and where did the boat go out from? Fair Seafood answers these because they know – specifically, not generally – the people who caught the fish in front of you. That knowledge is what separates a counter worth returning to from one that isn’t. If you’d like a copy of the cooking style and cuisine guideline, ask the team while you’re there.
Which of these species have you cooked before, and what surprised you? Or is there something in the Fair Seafood display you’ve always walked past and wondered about? Let me know below.
The cooking style and cuisine guideline is available – ask the team at Fair Seafood.
Each technique covered in the guideline is being explored in depth through the AncientGrains63 journal series. Follow along at AncientGrains63 as each article unpacks a different method, species, and the stories that meet the plate.
#AustralianSeafood #FairSeafood #UnderutilisedSpecies #SeasonalCooking #AdelaideFood #SustainableSeafood #AncientGrains63
