Samar Halarnkar: A roasted barramundi that doesn’t break the bank

Seafood for me is hearth and health: a nod to my seafaring ancestors, childhood memories, family traditions—and a reminder of cardiovascular glitches.

I cook fish often at home, limited only by the soaring cost of family favourites like white pomfret and surmai or kingfish. When I eat out, I inevitably gravitate towards fish because it is healthy and its freshness is easy to discern, unlike other meats and even vegetables.

I spent the last week of 2025 in Mumbai, as I always do, and while in that heaving, smoggy city of dreams and nightmares, I ate all the fish I could. It would be a travesty not to, never mind the increasingly turbid and contaminated Arabian Sea.

I don’t worry too much about the toxicity of the fish we eat. There is so much that can sicken us in our cities. When I was editor of The Indian Express in Mumbai two decades ago, I remember getting fish and vegetables tested. The fish contained lead and other heavy metals. But so did spinach—enough to fry your brain.

Newer studies show that while these toxins show up in other leafy greens as well, spinach is especially good at absorbing them. There is no reason to single out fish.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, onwards to my selections of the best fish I’ve eaten.

One of my favourite fish entrées is the red Thai seared rawas at the Kala Ghoda Café in the downtown Mumbai district of the same name. Accompanied by black rice and red Thai curry, it is flaky, fresh and aromatic. At joint number one is the citrus-glazed salmon with sautéed pak choi and, again, black rice at Toit brewery in Indiranagar, Bengaluru, and the finely seared slice of grouper on the special Christmas menu at Colaba’s Mag St café in Mumbai.

Then there is the magnificent whole steamed fish at Royal China in Mumbai and Bengaluru, although the best is at the original outlet at Fort, Mumbai, opposite CST station. I cannot recommend enough their steamed Chilean sea bass, pomfret and red snapper. My choice is always ginger and spring onion.

What makes me pause, though, is the price of these entrées—ever rising and atrociously high—mainly affordable to the 1%, or perhaps the 5% when the 5% feels like splurging, which I do now and then. Much as I enjoy the fish I’ve listed, the expense feels like a bit of a travesty.

The seared rawas and grouper are above ₹1,000 per slice. The whole steamed pomfret is ₹2,950, the red snapper ₹2,750, and the Chilean sea bass ₹3,950.

I cannot help feeling unsettled by this pricing. So, after quite some time, I decided to roast a whole fish to remind myself that, despite the rising and often absurd cost of fish, it is possible to feed an entire family at a dramatically reasonable rate.

I should also add that a home-roasted fish is far healthier than the seared slices I have eaten. I watched a Mag St chef on Instagram marinating a slice with oil and later searing it with a generous blob of butter.

Doubtless, this is important in giving it that crispy glaze and making the fish tastier, but come on people, to put a good seared, or otherwise healthy, fish on the table is not rocket science.

My roasted fish begins with a request to my procurement officer—my vegetarian wife who has taken over duties from my mother—to call the local fishmonger. “Mundi uda ko, cut marko,” she says, trying her hand at Bangalore Urdu. Lop off the head, score the sides.

She usually gets me an 800-gram fish, just perfect for a dinner table of four to five. The perfect blend of affordability and texture, in my experience, is bhetki or barramundi, although I recently tried a whole trout as well—a fish not common in these parts (the best I’ve eaten are in Kashmir).

The marination options are many, but I’ve found that Indian spices work very well indeed because when you retain the skin, as I do, only their flavour is lent to the fish, not their heat. For the barramundi below, I used basic spices from our spice box.

For the trout, I used a spice blend called Supeq, gifted by a friend. It contained seaweed, sea salt, shiitake, chillies, nettle and ginger. It blended excellently with the trout, allowing it to retain its natural flavour. Only, I should not have added salt, since it already had enough.

As for the cost, the bhetki was ₹800. That works out to ₹200 per head, about a tenth, or less, of what I paid eating out. You figure the rest.

ROASTED BARRAMUNDI

Serves 4

Ingredients

800g bhetki or barramundi, descaled

2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

2 tsp coriander powder

Half tsp turmeric powder

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp ginger-garlic paste

Juice of 1 lime or half a large lemon

1 tsp oil

Salt

Method

Wash the fish and leave the skin on. Slash the sides so the masala can be rubbed in. Marinate, working the masala into the slashes. Keep aside for at least one hour.

Lightly oil a strip of foil large enough to envelop the fish. Wrap the fish in foil. Preheat the oven.

Bake at 160 degrees Celsius for 35 minutes. Open the foil. The fish will have released water—use this as basting liquid. Increase the heat to 200 degrees Celsius for 10–15 minutes, until the skin begins to sear. Baste the fish frequently to prevent it from drying out. The fish should come off the bone easily.

Our Daily Bread is a column on easy, inventive cooking. Samar Halarnkar (@samar11) is the author of The Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking—And Other Dubious Adventures.