What starts as an early morning phone call to a Cornish dockside turns into fresh fish on the counter at Macclesfield’s award-winning Cheshire Fish less than 24 hours later. Making that early bird call to Newlyn dockside is a daily ritual for managing director, Neil Mayo, who has sourced some of the best fish our shores have to offer for the past few decades.
It was in 1997, Tony Wood and Ian Mayo took an opportunity from David Leving, for whom they worked, to open three sites for themselves in Macclesfield, Bramhall and Crewe. With help from younger brother Neil, Cheshire Fish was established and has continued to flourish.
The Macclesfield shop on Roe Street was originally a butcher with an abattoir attached, then a gentlemen’s clothes shop before finally becoming the site of the business today. Since the retirement of the original partners, Neil has taken over and now personally runs the Macclesfield shop in Roe Street, where business is booming.
Today, it is one of the region’s best fishmongers and a former Cheshire Life Food and Drink Award winner. Inside, the counters groan with more than 120 types of fresh fish, molluscs and crustaceans sourced from day boats in Devon, Cornwall and Dorset as well as from ports including Hull, Grimsby, Aberdeen, the Shetland islands and the West Coast of Scotland. Tuna and marlin come a little further from specialist markets in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. There is a seafood bar, freezer-friendly products and they work with Manchester’s Japanese Kitchen to host sushi sales and also stock sauces, condiments and many pickled and brined and frozen convenience products. They also specialise in game.
Proving bigger isn’t always better, the Cheshire Fish’s small team give that five-star, stellar service you would expect from an independent business that plays a big part of the local community. They compete with supermarkets through their care, skill and ability to prepare fish to requirements, gutted, filleted, pin-boned, portioned, vacuum packed ready for the freezer, whether that be sushi grade tuna or hand-dived scallops.
cheshirefish.co.uk
