Seafood Menu Terms Explained

Seafood menus use a fair amount of language that isn't always explained, and it's easy to order something you didn't expect. Here's a plain-English guide to the terms that come up most often, grouped by what they actually describe: how the fish is prepared raw, how it's cooked, how it's served, and what a handful of sourcing terms actually mean.

Raw and Cured Fish

Crudo is raw fish, thinly sliced and usually dressed simply, with olive oil, citrus and salt rather than a heavy sauce. It's the Italian relative of Japanese sashimi and South American ceviche, but served without the acid-cooking step either of those use, just the fish itself, barely touched.

Sashimi is the Japanese version of the same idea: raw fish, sliced, served without rice, usually alongside soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger. It's the base ingredient sushi is built from, minus the rice and rolling.

Ceviche is raw fish or shellfish cured in citrus juice, usually lime, until the acid firms up the flesh and turns it opaque, the same way heat would. It's not cooked with heat at all, the citrus does the work, and it's typically served cold with onion, chilli and coriander.

Tartare is finely chopped raw fish (or meat), usually seasoned and bound with a little oil, mustard or egg yolk, served cold as a starter. The texture is the main difference from crudo: tartare is chopped and mixed, crudo is sliced and left mostly alone.

Cooking Styles

Confit, when applied to fish, means slow-cooked in oil at a low temperature rather than fried or grilled. It produces a much softer, more delicate texture than high-heat cooking, and is common with oily fish like salmon.

Poached means gently cooked in liquid, usually water, stock or wine, kept well below boiling. It's a low-fuss, low-fat way to cook a delicate fillet without drying it out or adding much extra flavour on top of the fish itself.

Blackened is a specific, Cajun-origin technique: fish coated in a spice rub, then cooked in a very hot pan until the spice crust turns dark, almost charred, while the inside stays moist. It's a strong, spicy flavour, not a subtle one.

Pan-seared just means cooked quickly in a hot pan, usually with a little oil or butter, to get a browned crust on the outside while keeping the centre cooked through but not dry. It's the most common preparation for a simple, restaurant-standard fillet.

Sharing and Tasting Formats

A seafood platter is a shared, mixed selection, typically a mix of oysters, prawns, crab and sometimes lobster, served on ice, meant for two or more people to share rather than a single portion, the kind of dish that turns up across most of our special-occasion seafood guide.

Omakase is a Japanese term meaning roughly "I'll leave it to you", a meal where the chef chooses each course rather than the diner ordering from a fixed menu, common at higher-end sushi restaurants specifically. A tasting menu is the wider, non-Japanese version of the same idea: a fixed sequence of smaller courses chosen by the kitchen, common at our higher price tiers generally.

Soups, Broths and Market Terms

Bisque is a rich, smooth soup traditionally made from shellfish shells, usually crab, lobster or langoustine, simmered down and blended for a deep, concentrated flavour, then finished with cream. It's a starter, not a main, and a genuine indicator of a kitchen that isn't wasting its shellfish shells.

Chowder is a heartier, chunkier soup, usually built on a base of potato, cream or milk, and a mix of white fish and shellfish. It's the more casual, filling relative of a bisque, closer to a meal on its own than a starter.

"Shucked" means removed from the shell, most often used for oysters. Pre-shucked oysters are opened and ready to eat straight away; oysters served "on request" or unshucked are opened to order, generally the fresher option since they haven't been sitting exposed to air.

"Market price" (sometimes shown as "MP") appears next to a dish instead of a fixed price, usually for something whose cost genuinely varies day to day with availability, whole lobster and some daily-catch fish most commonly. It's not evasiveness, it's honesty about a genuinely variable ingredient cost, worth asking your server for the current price before ordering rather than assuming.

"Prawn" and "shrimp" are mostly a dialect difference, not two different things. Biologically there is a real distinction between true shrimp and prawns, but almost no UK menu follows it, British English defaults to "prawn" for what American English would call "shrimp", regardless of the exact species. The common claim that prawns are simply the bigger ones isn't a strict rule either, more a loose tendency than something you can rely on.

Sourcing Terms Worth Knowing

Wild-caught means the fish was caught in its natural habitat rather than raised in a farm, generally considered to have a firmer texture and more varied diet than farmed fish, though not automatically more sustainable, that depends on how and where it was caught.

Line-caught and MSC-certified are two specific sourcing claims worth understanding properly rather than assuming they're interchangeable, our guide to what "sustainably sourced" actually means covers both in detail, along with the separate certification used for farmed seafood.

Whole vs. fillet is a simple but useful distinction on a menu: a whole fish is served bone-in, head and tail generally still attached, more work to eat but often better value and more visually striking; a fillet is boneless, portioned, easier to eat but sometimes leaves less obviously "whole" on the plate.

Want to see these dishes on a real menu? Browse every seafood restaurant we've listed across London, with ratings, hours and booking links in one place.