Pretentiousness rules: Meet a "fish butcher"

Wikipedia assures me that a fishmonger is "someone who sells raw fish and seafood. Fishmongers can be wholesalers or retailers, and are trained at selecting and purchasing, handling, gutting, boning, filleting, displaying, merchandising and selling their product". 

I have no idea however, what differentiates a fishmonger from a "fish butcher". 

This thought is prompted by a press release that tells me Saint Peter chef-patron Josh Niland's Fish Butchery will open this Tuesday, April 17, at 388 Oxford St, Paddington, Sydney.

The Fish Butchery. Photo: Mark Best

It goes on to tell me the fish butcher is "the first of its kind". The first, perhaps, to use such a pretentious name. 

"The Fish Butchery is a boutique retail store selling high-quality Australian fish, cut and prepared to order and handed to the customer together with cooking advice from a skilled fish butcher."

Niland says. “Opening Fish Butchery is part of our on-going dream to encourage people to eat a wider variety of fish. We want to make those lesser-known varieties of fish not just a restaurant experience but commonplace at home. 

"They taste great, so our aim is for customer enjoyment but also to support sustainable fishing. There is a plethora of under-utilised fish in our waters and it’s often the case when the right method of cookery is applied, results exceed your expectations. By eating a wider variety, we take the pressure off the stock standard and highly commercialised selection”

Fish Butchery will display the fish in a static cool room with a temperature of 0-2 degrees celsius rather than resting on mounds of wet ice.

So. Pretty much identical to a fishmonger then. Same, same, but different. Maybe call it a seafood shop.