‘I only went in for a handful of prawns!’ I cried plaintively to my wife. ‘And I came out with half a trawler in my bag. How?’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said warmly, a benevolent smile on her face. ‘It’s Moxons.’

Moxons, you see, is one of those shops from which you simply cannot emerge solely with what you had intended to buy on the way in. You can’t. It’s impossible. Try it.

South Kensington is blessed in many respects: it has enough world class museums to keep the average American family  off the streets for weeks, legion bars and restaurants where the first language is ‘Ciao’, and a Lycée where high born French offspring go to be taught how to professionally pout, shrug and smoke Gauloises on street corners.

And it also has Moxons. One of the finest fishmongers in London.

Helmed by the ever affable Phil (left, above), this tiny gem on Bute Street is a reminder of what we have lost in a globalised world. Namely, a local shop staffed by passionate and knowledgeable people who take an enormous amount of pride in sourcing and selling the best produce they can find.

The depressing thing is this approach used to be the norm until we were persuaded that what we really needed was to be sold four day old, previously frozen fish, preserved under nitrogen and wrapped in ridiculous amounts of plastic by someone who, if push came to shove, would have a hard time identifying a piscine arse from elbow.

Moxons is different. Very different. For a start, its fish are spankingly fresh, coming, in the main, from day boats at Plymouth. Secondly, its four young staff have 37 years worth of experience between them. What this means to you and me as we’re standing in front of the slab on a Tuesday morning is that not only were the clear eyed, glistening specimens staring up at you probably only hoiked out of the water just over 24 hours ago but also the guys helping you to choose between them actually know what they’re talking about.

And what fish. You cannot help but be bewitched by the sheer abundance the oceans have to offer and whose bounty you have barely, you realise, begun to touch. Beguiling, kaleidoscopically coloured mackerel jostle on the ice with enormous turbot and dainty sole, both lemon and Dover. Orange dotted bril vie for attention with lascivious monkfish tail and thick halibut steaks while the, frankly, just plain ugly gurnard, once used as lobster bait but now the trendiest fish you can serve up in SW7, waits for a well-heeled Cinderella to come along and scoop it up. And that’s before you even get to the fresh crab and lobster, mussels from Teignmouth, oysters from Essex and langoustines from Scotland… to name but a few of the delights on offer.

And somehow, none of it smells of fish. Not even remotely. Lean in and inhale the positively Hogarthian still life before you and all you will smell is… well, that heady mixture of salt, ozone and fresh seaweed. In other words, the sea. It’s like having your own private jetty over the Atlantic in the heart of west London.

And all this from an unprepossessing, if not preternaturally neat and tidy, site the diminutive size of which would give your average oligarch pause for thought before he tried to garage his Maybach in it.

‘We get a lot of private chefs these days. And Spanish,’ Phil said ruefully to me recently one morning. ‘It used mainly to be French but now it’s the Spanish.’

‘Many English?’

He screws his face up in that way only an Englishman can when he wants to say the right thing.

‘A few,’ he replies diplomatically.

Which is a shame – a tragedy almost – but an understandable one. For over the years we, the English, have fallen for that lie that fish are smelly, tricky to cook and, if left for more than ten minutes in the open air, virtually toxic. In other words, not worth the bother. Best leave them to a small, sterile section at the back of the supermarket whose presence we can politely ignore.

And as I stand watching the tightly choreographed dance behind the counter – how four grown men slice, debone and filet in such a small space is, to me, a constant source of wonder; how they manage to emerge laceration free and still friends at the end of the day is nothing short of a miracle – a small part of my heart breaks.

Ultimately, good local shops like Moxons are about people. People who care, who love what they do and, as a result, connect with you and root you to the place where you live in a way no chain, with its often well meaning but invariably underpaid, itinerant work force and their greedy venture capital paymasters, can. Sadly, in London and in the wider UK (and on the continent too, for that matter), they are a dying breed.

‘We just like nice things,’ Phil says in his habitually gentle manner. Looking around the densely packed store, I cannot help but agree with him. How he manages to squeeze so much temptation into such a small space, everything from fresh burrata to tinned tomatoes, handpicked samphire to Jersey Royal potatoes, tinned tomatoes to Spanish almonds, I have no idea. All I do know, however, is I am weak in the face of such opulence.

And so I start to think about lunch. And then dinner. And then tomorrow’s lunch and the day’s after that. Like I said, weak, and before I know it, I am back out on the bustling streets of South Ken with a large bag groaning with impossibly fresh mussels, a dressed crab, a filleted bream, a couple of Amalfi lemons and, best of all, a large portion of cod from the thick end of the fillet.

I stride home, happy. Not just because of the food in my hands and the prospect of a quiet meal with my wife, but because of the way that this all too brief but very human interlude has left me feeling about life and where I live. Ultimately, to paraphrase Phil, we like nice people.

Roast cod with burnt butter

|| Shopping ||

A thick piece of cod filet (go by sight not weight for quantity), skin on (I beg you)
A large knob of good quality unsalted butter
Salt and pepper.

Cod is one of the meatiest of all fish and so is great not just for a hearty lunch but also as a meat substitute for burly blokes who profess not to like anything that swims (you know the sort).

|| Cooking ||

Turn your oven on to about 200/220 degrees C.

Take an oven proof frying pan and put on a moderate to high flame. When the pan is hot, put in your oil of choice. This can be olive (avoid other vegetable oils) or, ideally, a hard fat such as lard or, best of all, beef dripping.

When it begins to smoke turn the heat down a touch and lay your filet in, away from you and skin side down. Cook for about two to three minutes. (You’re aiming here to just brown the skin rather than cook the fish per se. Pans and cookers vary and so, with a bit of practice, you’ll discover exactly how long you need to leave it in for this stage.)

Then place the pan in the oven and leave for about ten minutes (see my note above for precise timings). Personally, I like my cod (and salmon) medium rare. For me, it’s done when you press it and although it feels firm, there is a bit of give or bounce to the flesh.

When it is done to your liking, take it out, let it rest for a minute or so and then plate it up. Then take the same pan, put it back on a moderate to high heat and throw in the butter. Be as generous as you dare and watch first as it melts, then foams and finally begins to turn nut brown. In an ideal world you catch it at this point, but don’t lose too much sleep over getting it right. Finally pour the beurre noisette (as it’s called) over the fish and serve.

If beurre noisette isn’t your thing, or if the weather is especially hot and you need something a bit lighter or fresher, you can always skip the burnt butter stage and drizzle a little pesto over the fish or, simpler still, just dress it with some good sea salt and a slice of Amalfi lemon on the side to squeeze over.

Accompaniments: anything you would serve with meat. You’ll see in the photos that I served the cod with roast Romero peppers and a warm french beans with vinaigrette. But it can go with just about anything from new potatoes to tomato salad, from steamed samphire to steamed greens, Puy lentils to chips. Really, anything.