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41 Meeting House Lane · Brighton
only ever line-caught
Opened Good Friday 2021 by two Brighton locals. How hook-and-line fish and a room in the Lanes became Time Out's #2 chippy in the UK.
We opened Rybka on Good Friday 2021, in the middle of the 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 and only ever line-caught. A proper cocktail list. Local beers. Great triple-cooked chips. A place you'd come back to on an ordinary weekday, not just a stag-do Saturday.
Five years on, the brief is the same. The fish is still swimming.
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.
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 among the Lanes' jewellers and galleries. 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. Glazed white tiles with a sea-glass stripe, duck-egg and navy walls, festoon bulbs and hanging plants. A fish painted on the front window. The door is usually open in summer.
In January 2025, Time Out ranked us the #2 best fish and chips in the UK.
“You'd be hard pressed to come by a zestier tartare or crispier batter.”
On Google we have 4.7 stars from 1,500+ reviews: the highest-rated traditional fish and chip shop 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.
Walk in, or book a table. Bring a dog. Order the Fish Supper for 2 and the Rybka Special: a rollmop herring with a shot of frozen vodka, £5. The house handshake.
We'll save you a chip.