The Clove Club returns to steamed mackerel as stocks decline

Mackerel once arrived at The Clove Club with the reliability of seasons changing. For a decade, Kernow Sashimi supplied the fish with such consistency that it occupied the menu for roughly eighty percent of the year, transforming what cookbooks had always classified as a summer delicacy into something far more permanent. The kitchen learned its depths, its variations, its moods. They cured it shime saba style, salting the flesh before steeping it in sweet vinegar, torching the skin until it crackled, and finishing it with English mustard and gooseberry purée: a dish that spoke of rigour and refinement in equal measure.

These days, the fish arrives in glimpses. Supply has grown so erratic that when Kernow Sashimi delivers mackerel through the kitchen doors, the cooks recognise it as something to be cherished rather than relied upon. The shift reflects a broader reckoning with what the ocean is willing to yield, a humbling of assumptions about abundance and permanence.

This summer, faced with the startling quality of the mackerel that has come through, the kitchen made a decision born of restraint: steam it, and let the fish speak for itself. No vinegar, no torch, no architectural composition. Just the pure, unadorned taste of fresh mackerel, its silver skin translucent in the gentle heat, its flesh delicate and clean. It is, in its own way, a more demanding dish than the cured version, one that refuses to hide behind technique or balance. It asks only that the fish be exceptional, and that the kitchen know when to stop.

The Clove Club is located in Shoreditch, London.

Imagery courtesy of The Clove Club (@thecloveclub).