How the day-boat list works

Every morning around six, Dave Marden sends a list. It is a photograph of a piece of paper, usually taken in poor light, and it says what the small boats out of Brixham landed overnight and what it costs.

Day boat means one tide. The boats go out and come back the same day, so nothing has sat in ice on a trawler for a week. It also means there is no guarantee about what turns up — if the weather is bad the boats stay in, and then there is no list at all.

We order to a dish, not to a species. The board says whole plaice with brown butter, capers and sea beet, because most weeks that is what there is and it is what we would pick. But the dish is really "a flat fish, whole, cooked over the fire, dressed with brown butter", and brill, dab or a decent-sized gurnard all go through it happily. When it is not plaice we say so at the table before you order, not after.

The price stays the same either way. Some weeks that works in our favour and some weeks it does not. Averaged over a month it comes out roughly level, and it is much easier than reprinting a board twice a week.

Whole fish is a choice, not a flourish. A fillet is easier to cook and easier to serve, and it is also drier. Cooking a fish on the bone over embers gives you something you cannot get any other way, and the bit next to the head is the best bit. We will fillet it at the table if you would rather not deal with it — just say.

What we do not buy. Nothing from the deep water boats, nothing frozen at sea, and no bass in the closed season. If Dave's list has nothing on it we want, the fish course comes off for a night and there is an extra vegetable dish instead. That happened twice in June and nobody died.