Genoa fish market: Just fresh local and seasonal fish

Every day of the week, morning and afternoon. Did you know that?

Genoa Fish Market / Harbor

I love buying fish directly from the hands of men who have fished it during the night. It is a way to take part and make a tribute to their hard work. And then I would spend hours on the docks, between crates, nets and baskets, watching the tired fishermen silently gathering their nets, checking them metre by meter and if necessary repairing them, always concentrated and deep in their thoughts.

In Calata Vignolo (just next to Galata Sea Museum) in a beautiful piling with glass windows and blue steel poles the Genoa fish market is active since year 2013.

At the Genoa fish market you can find only  local and seasonal fish. You can buy hakes, goatfishes, shrimps, octopus, anchovies. The very same fish that Ligurian fishermen and Genoa families brought to the table every day before fishing became a global marketplace.

This is a “good, clean and fair” fish – they would say at Slow Food – because:

• it was fished by Genoese fishermen: this enhances and encourages local work

• it has been fished with traditional and sustainable methods that respect the sea and its ecosystem: no intensive and unjustified fishing

• it has a very short chain and it’s origin can be easily traced. You can see with your eyes the fisherman who frees the fish from the net and puts it in the box.

A great and concrete opportunity, then, for both consumers and fishermen to appreciate, value and promote local fish.

In Genoa fish market furthermore (and this is a great advantage over normal fisheries) fish can be bought every day of the week (Sunday and Monday included), weather permitting obviously.

In particular:

• In the morning (from 8:30 am to 12:00 pm) small fishing boats arrives and discharge anchovies, sardines and small fishes;

• In the afternoon (from 14:00 to 17:00), trawlers arrive with prawns, shrimp, cuttlefish, squid and octopus and bigger fishes.

click the picture to see the recipe for Spaghetti alla Vongole

Among the future projects at the Genoa fish market there is that to create a spot where to savour the freshly caught fish cooked at the time by the fishermen (of them used to be a chef!).

While waiting for this beautiful initiative to take place in the ancient port area, it is already possible to eat (and take away) freshly landed fish in the small restaurant  GE8317 (it is the fishing boat registration number) recently opened in the gorgeous beach of Boccadasse by a bunch of young enthusiastic fishermen. The perfect place where to take a box of fish&chips and eat it directly on the beach drinking a cool beer!