Chef food. Fish-shack prices. No plates required.

We didn't hire a decorator. We just kept things we liked.

The floor is black-and-white checkerboard, laid on the diagonal, because a fish shack should look a little like a diner. The walls are blonde plywood on top and navy beadboard on the bottom, with a powder-blue vinyl banquette running the length of the room. There's a JAWS poster. There's a Cool Hand Luke poster. There's a pair of vintage fishing rods crossed on the wall above a shadow box of old lures, a flat-lay of antique cannery hardware next to a 1909 survey map of a BC salmon cannery, and — because Tyson used to run a meat restaurant — a steer skull mounted over the bar for no reason anyone can fully explain.

And then there's the betta fish. A local artist, Noemi Kozikowska, painted a red-and-blue Siamese fighting fish across the whole back wall — enormous trailing fins, rising bubbles, genuinely beautiful. It's completely at odds with the paper trays and the squeeze bottles, and that's exactly the point. It's the one place we let ourselves be fancy.

Every table gets the same setup: malt vinegar, white vinegar, salt, pepper, and a ketchup bottle in a little wood caddy with an orange divider. One food writer called it "the holy square of condiments." We're not going to argue.