Etta's Seafood Kitchen offers sublime tastes from a Caribbean queen

Serving dishes such as fish curry, coriander and garlic prawns and steamed fish with a Caribbean twist, Etta’s Seafood Kitchen is located on 6th Avenue, in the heart of Brixton Village.

The Grade II-listed market arcade linking Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road is famous for its Afro-Caribbean textiles and food stuffs, but it’s currently undergoing refurbishment, attracting new pop-up boutiques and vintage furniture shops.

Hopefully it will bring in more middle-class shoppers to the area (they operate a Brixton pound to keep investment local) but it’s places such as Etta that give the Village authenticity. You get fresh food at incredibly reasonable prices, plus a chatshow thrown in. Etta and her daughter dispense recipes and romantic advice. If you don’t finish a dish, they want to know why. Fancy something off menu, just tip off Etta and she’ll cook it for you. She gets all her fish from Billingsgate, but she has the whole market as her food store.

London bloggers are raving about Etta’s. I was tipped off by novelist Stella Duffy, who lives nearby. There’s no website, just a telephone number. It’s cash only. Opening hours are 11-6pm (with late supper on Thursdays when the market is open until 10pm).

But the New York Times has already written about it. Last month, Food & Travel magazine devoted six pages to the market and stars such as Etta and The Agile Rabbit (great pizza).

Frankly, I have no idea how she manages the cooking — everything goes on in a tiny cubicle behind the counter. "The secret is to be organised," she tells me firmly.

It’s homely kitchen table decor with interesting paintings, and novels and poetry scattered across the tables. The fiftysomething couple behind me spent their lunch hour kissing each other’s hands.
But it’s the good honest food that attracts. We hoovered up the crab fritters (crispy golden morsels of crabmeat, corriander and carrot served with an egg cup of sweet chilli sauce, £4. 50). And they do the best battered calamari and chips I’ve eaten (al dente rather than rubbery), £4.50.

There’s an emphasis on nose-to-tail eating. If you’re a bit of a prissy pescetarian, you might find the mixed seafood linguine (£4.50) with chunks of crab shell a bit raw. But the sauce was wonderfully spicy without taking your head off. Next time I’m coming back for the lobster pot (£19 for a whole lobster). "It’s a café that doesn’t serve café food," my friend says admiringly.

After mains you get a complimentary fruit plate. There’s no licence but you can bring a bottle. They do fresh juices, such as "Etta’s Energizer, with beetroot, carrot and ginger".

And do try her sorrel cocktail (£2), made from Caribbean red sorrel. "Very good for the blood and colon," she says, miming its progress through the digestive tract.

It’s great to see a mother-daughter combo taking on a male-dominated industry. If I were a Channel 4 commissioning editor, I’d offer Etta a TV show immediately.

Etta's Seafood Kitchen
4-42 Brixton Village, Unit 46, Coldharbour Lane, SW9