Good Friday, 2021.
We opened Rybka on Good Friday 2021 — a symbolic day for a fish shop, and a quietly defiant one for a restaurant opening mid-pandemic.
Harry and Rafał, two Brighton locals, started it. The brief was simple: a fish and chip shop Brighton actually deserved. Fresh fish — line-caught, only ever line-caught. A proper cocktail list. Local beers. Great triple-cooked chips. A place you'd come back to on a Tuesday, not just a stag-do Saturday.
Five years on, the brief is the same. The fish is still swimming.
Rabka to the Lanes.
Rafał grew up in Rabka — a small spa town in southern Poland, tucked into the foothills of the Tatras. If you've been, you know: people eat like they mean it, and they drink like they mean it, and the two are never separate.
That's where the name comes from. Rybka means "little fish" in Polish — and rybka lubi pływać is the toast you give before the vodka goes down. Pickled fish. Frozen vodka. Repeat. The ritual is older than any of us.
We didn't want to build a Polish restaurant in Brighton. We wanted to build a Brighton chippy with Polish spirit. The frozen vodka is on the back bar. The rollmops are on the menu. Everything else is British to the bone.
Every fish has a hook in its mouth.
There's a reason we only serve line-caught fish, and it isn't a marketing line.
Most fish in most chippies comes from trawlers — nets dragged across the seabed, indiscriminate, heavy on bycatch, rough on the ecosystems they trawl. It's cheaper. It's legal. It's also not the fish we want to cook.
Hook-and-line fishing catches one fish at a time. No bycatch. No seabed damage. The fish lands in better condition because it hasn't been crushed in a net. You can taste the difference when it hits the batter — a cleaner flake, a firmer bite.
Our fish comes from day boats around the UK coast. Cornwall, the Sussex coast, Scotland depending on the season. It's at the shop within 48 hours of being caught.
It means we sometimes say "we've run out of haddock" on a Friday night. We make peace with that. The alternative is fish we don't stand behind, and we'd rather close early than serve it.
41 Meeting House Lane.
Meeting House Lane has been a street in Brighton since the 1700s. It's narrow, cobbled, crooked, and quiet — the kind of lane that reminds you Brighton isn't a seaside resort first. It's a historic city with a seaside attached.
We're tucked between a jeweller, a barber, and a bookshop. Seven minutes from the station, four minutes from the seafront, thirty seconds from half a dozen of the best pubs in town. People stumble on us by accident, walking the Lanes on holiday. They come back.
Two floors, 60 seats. Chalk-white walls, poster-black trim. A fish painted on the front window. The door is usually open in summer.
Where we are now.
In January 2025, Time Out ranked us the #2 best fish and chips in the UK. Their exact line: "You'd be hard pressed to come by a zestier tartare or crispier batter."
Read the Time Out UK Feature →
Google has us at 4.7 stars across 1,300+ reviews — the highest rating of any chippy in Brighton.
None of that changes what we do. The menu's the same. The fish is line-caught. The rollmop is rolled. The vodka is frozen.
Come and eat.
Walk in, or book a table. Bring a dog. Order the Fish Supper for 2 and the Rybka Special — a rollmop with a shot of vodka, £5, the house handshake.
We'll save you a chip.
RYBKA · 41 Meeting House Lane · Brighton BN1 1HB
Rybka lubi pływać.