@gjaffe
Portrush Harbour is lined with seafood restaurants and the fishing boats that supply them.
PHOTOGRAPHS ANDREW MONTGOMERY @montgomeryphoto
IT’S SATURDAY MORNING AT ST GEORGE’S and the market in central Belfast is thick with competing aromas: crisping bacon from an Ulster fry, rich coffee and the sweet fragrance of dahlias on a farm stall laden with rhubarb, blackcurrants and a rainbow of fruit juices. Nearby a band plays Here Comes the Sun and, as if on cue, the daylight filtering through the Victorian glass roof intensifies. At an open door behind the seafood traders, a gull waits for scraps. A young fishmonger holds up today’s haul: a gleaming, pinkish-orange slab of salmon. Next to him, Alan Coffey, a moustached old-hand in his yellow fisherman’s wellies, shucks oysters for a buyer who can’t wait until he’s home to try them. ‘We’ve always been spoilt for seafood, with all the loughs and the Irish Sea,’ says Alan, surrounded by evidence of this – heaps of crabs, lobsters, mussels and winkles.