Where to get the best seafood in Suffolk

Suffolk's coastline of nutrient-rich cold North Sea water and tidal estuaries are a perfect environment for fish and shellfish to thrive. Seafood is brought ashore at Lowestoft and Southwold and in Aldeburgh fishing boats are launched from the shingle beach.

Lowestoft still has a working inshore fishing fleet whose catch supplies pubs, restaurants and fishmongers along the Suffolk and Norfolk coast. Buy it yourself from World of Fish at Cooke Road on South Lowestoft Industrial Estate.

Southwold is thirteen miles south of Lowestoft and here you’ll get the best seafood experience in Suffolk. Head to Blackshore Harbour on the River Blyth, bump along the pot-holed rough-and-ready road, and you’ll come across an array of black clapboard

Get your fresh fish from the Sole Bay Fish Company or Samantha K’s. Sole Bay Fish Co also has fish and chips, as does Mrs T’s. If fish and chips aren’t your thing, try Salt Shore café.

Look out for the 1953 high tide mark on the front wall at The Harbour Inn. There are few more characterful pubs in Suffolk, and it’s a buzzy place serving a working harbour.

If you’re an adrenaline junkie take an exhilarating trip with Coastal Voyager or, for something more relaxing, take the rowing boat ferry across the Blyth to Walberswick, a picturesque seaside village with lovely green, sandy beach and great seafood at The Anchor. Get involved with the crabbing at Wally’s Bridge on the small Dunwich River.

Don’t leave without exploring charming Southwold itself. With its Victorian pier and quirky amusements, beach huts, long sandy beach, Adnams Brewery and Distillery and iconic lighthouse, it feels as if it was set in aspic in 1953. Southwold High Street and the nearby roads have a great range of independent shops, delis, bakeries, restaurants and pubs.

Along the promenade on Aldeburgh seafront you’ll find a line of black-painted hacks selling fresh and smoked fish and shellfish. Without a harbour directly to the sea, the fishermen haul their boats on and off the shingle beach.

Head to Ash Smoked Fish for a huge range of traditionally smoked fish and shellfish, as well as tasting platters, pates and tarts include crab and samphire, trout and spinach and Noon tart is a mixture of smoked mackerel with cheddar cheese.

DA Fryer has a prominent A-board telling you of the fresh catch from their boat caught that morning. There’s fresh line-caught cod fillet and loin at Aldeburgh Fresh Fish Company. With the number of pots stacked on the shoreline, you’ll know lobsters are a big thing in Aldeburgh. As they like to say in these parts, ‘Anything fresher is still swimming’.

If it's frying time, you'll see queues on the High Street for the fish and chip shop. It's a tradition to take your goodies to the seafront to eat.

The Red House in Aldeburgh, the former home of Benjamin Britten, is now a museum dedicated to the composer and Aldeburgh Museum is housed in the iconic Grade 1 Listed, 16th century timber-framed Moot Hall.

If you’re at Snape Maltings, which hosts the annual Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival, try the seafood at the Malted Mussel food outlet. Take the weight off your feet with a recline in a deckchair, take a look around the excellent retail outlets, enjoy the sculpture which includes Henry Moores, or take a boardwalk amble along the Alde Estuary to Iken church.

At the end of the long shingle spit which starts at Aldeburgh you’ll find Orford Ness Nature Reserve, run by the National Trust. There are bookable ferry trips from Orford Quay to visit an eerie landscape of concrete bomb-proof pagodas. The site hosted early radar and Cold War testing.

Also on Orford Quay is Pinney’s of Orford selling their own range of smoked fish and shellfish. Established in 1959, Pinney’s are a third generation, family-run business specialising fine quality smoked products, and growing their own oysters in Butley Creek.

Pinney’s run the excellent Butley Orford Oysterage restaurant which as well their other produce has on the menu fresh-caught fish from their boat Southern Cross.

While in Orford, don’t miss the excellent Pump Street Bakery and take in the view of Orford Ness from the top of Orford Castle, built by Henry II to keep the local barons in order.