Fish and chips return to the Napier CBD

Matt and Nuch Douglas ready for business at Napier's first CBD fish and ship shop in more than a decade, The Fisherman's Shop, in Hastings St. Photo / Doug Laing

The Napier CBD has its first fish and chip shop in a decade with the opening of The Fisherman’s Shop on Hastings St.

The shop, on a site perhaps best known in recent years as that of gaming and karaoke bar the Windsock, which closed five years ago, The Fisherman’s Shop “Chippery” is the first with a specialist eat-in or takeaway fish and chips spot in the CBD since the closure of Alex and Bill Paxie’s National Café in Emerson St in 2015.

The next most recent was Paxie’s in Hastings St, run by Nick Paxie and which closed in 2006.

The latest enterprise is the dream of career fisherman and trawler operator Matt Douglas and is run by wife Nuch, the couple branching out after starting their first shop in a petrol station-turned-takeaways establishment in Taradale Rd, Pirimai, in August 2024.

Having recognised a need in the CBD, including tourists and other visitors hunting out a genuine Kiwi favourite, it’s been a long haul for the couple, having taken on the lease eight months ago, targeting opening before Labour weekend.

While the premises had included an operating kitchen, it needed to be brought up to compliance with fire safety rules, and a new extractor fan “out the back” needed resource consent, alongside “a whole lot of new issues”, Douglas said.

It meant there wasn’t any fanfare about the opening, but, raised on a farm near Porangahau and with 35-40 years in the fishing industry, Douglas reckons the time is right for a CBD fish and chip shop in a seaside city that takes pride in its fish and chips reputation, with shops in at least 10 suburbs.

With the choice of takeaway and sit-down, it harks back to the days of the National Cafe (now the site of a sandwich bar), Paxie’s (now a bank site) and – going back more than 30 years – to the Napier Cafeteria (with entrances off Tennyson and Hastings Sts), all popular for family dining in the days of Friday-night shopping.

It’s a tradition he and Nuch would like to restore, with what is thought to be now the only “vertically integrated” fish business operator in town.

The focus, with boats, processing and retail and more than 20 full and part-time employees, is on fresh fish, either as fish and chips, or fish from the chiller.

But there is a part to be played by the customer: Douglas says fish and chips are to be consumed as soon as possible - “five minutes, not an hour later”, and not taken “all the way to Hastings” and going soggy along the way.

“If you are a fish connoisseur, and there are a lot of them in Napier, you need to eat straight away,” he said.

Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter, based in Napier, with more than 50 years in the news industry, and even longer becoming a self-acclaimed fish and chips connoisseur, from the family Friday meal, with the wrapping unfolded on the lounge floor, or at the “caf” table in town.