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Grilled fish fillets, whole fish and charred lemons on a charcoal grill

October 2026 · Issue 02 · For restaurant owners

The Most-Wanted Seafood Dishes This Month, and What Diners Are Searching For

A two-week read of what diners opened on FishRestaurants.com — by dish style, country and city — plus what the most-viewed restaurants have in common and three fixes you can make this month.

Published · Data window 18 Sep – 1 Oct 2026

Source: FishRestaurants.com listing-page views, 18 Sep – 1 Oct 2026 (the first two weeks we logged them). 688 human sessions on 537 restaurant pages after removing 4,914 automated hits. The site was offline for part of 29 Sep – 1 Oct. Some views came from owners we were in touch with, so treat small differences with care.

01 · Most-wanted dishes

What diners opened, by seafood style

Two in three sessions went to general seafood restaurants. Among specialist styles, sushi and omakase led in the US, UK, Italy and Australia, ahead of lobster and crab, grilled whole fish and fish & chips.

All countries · share of sessions

  • Seafood restaurant (general)65% · 447
  • Sushi & omakase19% · 130
  • Lobster & crab5% · 37
  • Grilled whole fish (Mediterranean)5% · 33
  • Fish & chips3% · 23
  • Oysters & raw bar2% · 11
  • Steak & seafood1% · 7

By country · top specialist styles

CountrySessionsTop styles (sessions)
United States278Sushi & omakase (82) · Lobster & crab (16) · Grilled whole fish (13)
United Kingdom112Sushi & omakase (19) · Fish & chips (12) · Lobster & crab (7)
Italy66Sushi & omakase (12)
Australia59Sushi & omakase (12) · Grilled whole fish (4) · Lobster & crab (4)
France40Lobster & crab (8)
  • Crab in a glossy red chilli sauce with fried buns
    Lobster & crab
  • Whole grilled sea bream with lemon slices, olives and potatoes
    Grilled whole fish
  • Battered fish fillets with tartare sauce and lemon
    Fish & chips

What about searches? We don’t log the words people type into our search box yet, so this issue uses listing-page views instead — the pages diners actually opened.

Source: Sessions on restaurant listing pages, grouped by the restaurant’s name and cuisine tags in our directory (e.g. “sushi”, “fish and chips”, “oyster”). Each restaurant counts in one bucket only.

02 · Hot cities

Where diners were looking

New York and London led, followed by Rome, Sydney and Miami. Each city page lists every seafood restaurant we have there — check yours is on it and up to date.

  1. 01New York · United States88 sessions →
  2. 02London · United Kingdom77 sessions →
  3. 03Rome · Italy64 sessions →
  4. 04Sydney · Australia41 sessions →
  5. 05Miami · United States39 sessions →
  6. 06Paris · France29 sessions →
  7. 07Goa · India21 sessions →
  8. 08Istanbul · Turkey15 sessions →
  9. 09Porto · Portugal15 sessions →
  10. 10Auckland · New Zealand11 sessions →
  11. 11Boston · United States10 sessions →
  12. 12Los Angeles · United States10 sessions →

Source: Sessions on restaurant listing pages in each city, 18 Sep – 1 Oct 2026. Rome combines our “Roma” and “Rome” listings.

03 · What the most-viewed do differently

Things you can see on the most-viewed restaurants

We compared the 79 restaurants that drew two or more sessions with 4,000 published listings in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UAE that drew none. The clearest gaps were ratings, photos and a booking link on the homepage.

What we checkedMost-viewedNever viewed
Google rating 4.5 or higher68%52%
5 or more photos on the FishRestaurants listing32%8%
Booking or reservation link on the homepage85%64%
Menu linked from the homepage85%75%
Restaurant schema markup on the website36%17%
Menu only as a PDFNo sign that PDF menus held anyone back in this sample — what mattered was having a menu one tap away.18%6%

These are patterns, not proof: the samples are small, and some of the most-viewed restaurants are ones whose owners we were already working with. Nobody can promise a position in search results, and we don’t.

Source: Our directory data for each listing (rating, photo count, website), plus the restaurants’ own homepages: 39 of the most-viewed and 36 randomly picked never-viewed restaurants, fetched 2 Oct 2026.

04 · Three quick fixes

Three fixes to make this month

Each takes under an hour and matches something we saw on the most-viewed restaurants.

  1. 1

    Put “Book a table” where people land

    Add a booking link (or a tap-to-call phone number) to the top of your homepage and to your Google Business Profile. 85% of the most-viewed restaurants we checked had one on the homepage, against 64% of the rest.

  2. 2

    Give your listing at least five current photos

    Dining room, your best-selling plates and the front door. Only 8% of never-viewed listings had five or more photos. Claim your free FishRestaurants listing to add your own.

    Claim your free listing
  3. 3

    Make your menu one tap away — and readable by Google

    Link the menu from your homepage and add Restaurant schema (name, address, hours, menu URL) to your site. A PDF is fine; a missing link is not. Then ask this week’s happy guests for a Google review.

For owners

Get featured — claim your free listing

Update your photos, hours, menu link and booking link on FishRestaurants.com, and tell us what you want diners to know. Claiming is free.

Claim your listing

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The Seafood Journal is published by Fish Restaurants LLC, Albuquerque, NM, USA. Looking for home recipes? They now live in our recipes section.