Lobster Abuse

Smee and I live embarrassingly close to the London wholesale fish market, Billingsgate, where London restaurantuers, fish & chip owners etc go to buy their seafood supplies. Seriously, it is about a 10-15 minute slow walk. Members of the public can also purchase here but be warned as many of the stall owners only sell in bulk. Oh, and also be prepared to get there before 8.30am when it shuts. As typical wholesale markets go, trading begins at the crack of dawn at 5.00am. The market is actually open at about 3-4am, however law forbids any monetary exchange prior to 5am. I have no idea why. Some silly English law I presume.

Smee and I are seafood lovers and have always talked about going to Billingsgate, however we are also very lazy and hadn't made enough effort to get there. It just so happened that we had an adventure on Friday night, whereby we went into Chinatown, and then decided to not stay, came back, went to the local Asda and ate dinner at 1.30am. I had the bright idea of "hey Smee, Billingsgate opens soon, we should just stay up and go there". So we did. Smee played computer games, I caught up on my blogging and then off we went to Billingsgate.

Despite it being 5am, the carpark was already full! We found our way to the door where other patrons were emerging with garbage bags full of seafood goodies.

Nothing beats the Sydney fish markets in terms of service to the general public (errrr non-vampire trading hours? sashimi on demand?) but clearly Billingsgate is servicing the food industry. Yeah it was a wholesale market - boxes and boxes of fish, prawns, shellfish all piled high and priced accordingly. Damn it was cheap!

Anyhow, there were a few traders who do allow the tiny people like myself to buy singularly and by the kilo. Smee and I made our way home with scallops, prawnies (Smee plans to master Har Mee next), pippi meat and of course two beautiful lobsters. We should've bought some fish but decided not to as we had no storage space.

Do keep in mind, by now, it was about 6am. I did want to sleep but hmmm we were a little peckish. Hence the early morning lobster breakfast is born. I made aioli (thank you food processor) while Smee prepared the lobbies for their impending date with destiny.

Smee and I do like to play with our food, and these photos are reminiscent of our Yabby dish

Smee with L1 and then breaking up a battle between L1 and L2.

Me so happy to have new pet, Robbie the Robster. Lobsters fighting it out on the stove.

The Doomsday Pot. Can you see L1 trying to escape?

Clockwise from top left: Smee sending the lobbies on their way to lobster heaven i.e my tummy. Lobbie looking peaceful. Lobbie claw up close. Two lobbies together.

I do have to say, the lobster meat was absolutely fresh and went very well with the aioli. I went to bed at 7.30am and needless to say, didn't get up until 3pm.

UPDATE: I do feel a little bad about eating Robbie the Robster after reading this article in the Metro, however I am in agreement with Trevor Roll's comment.