TodayGilthead, anchovies, octopus, Thracian shellfish
The boats
A standing order, paid on the pier, for whatever is best rather than whatever is cheap. The rest comes from the dawn auction fifty paces away.
The fleet
18 m wooden longliner · Captain Stelios Petrakis
Gilthead, sea bream and dentex, off the bank east of the port. Stelios will not go out in a meltemi over six, which is why the gilthead is sometimes two euros more and why he has never lost a crewman.
17 m gillnetter · Captain Theodoris Mavrommatis
Sea bream, bonito and sole, from the shallow ground toward Diavoliki. Theodoris lands earliest; his crates are usually the first through our door at half past five, and he waits for his coffee.
22 m purse seiner · Captain Aris Karaiskos
The whole small-pelagic family: anchovies, sardines, mackerel. When Aris has a good night the anchovies are eleven euros a kilo and we put them on every table without apologising.
We do not buy from trawlers under seventeen metres. This sounds like snobbery and is not. Below that length the gear that is economic to run takes too much of everything else with it, and the bycatch is wrong. It is the one rule Vassilis wrote down.
The standing order is paid in cash, on the pier, before the auction opens. This is not romance; it is why we get first refusal at half past five instead of bidding against four other kitchens at seven.
Shellfish, sardines when the Niki has had a poor night, and the occasional rarity that Yiorgos cannot walk past. The mussels are not from a boat at all — they are rope-grown at a small farm at Maronia, an hour west, and they arrive on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Whatever the three boats landed, plus what Yiorgos could not walk past.