The current study aimed to investigate the sensory impact, antibacterial effect and histamine degradation effect of lemon essential oil (LEO) (1 and 2% conc.) on fish fillet experimentally inoculated with Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) during cold storage. Referring to the obtained results, treatment with LEO extended the sensory characters acceptability when compared with control group. LEO 2% showed higher sensory scores up to the 9th day of the experiment, while spoilage mildly appeared at the end of the experiment in 1% LEO treated samples, indicating that the LEO preservative effect is a concentration dependent. Regarding to the antibacterial effect, there is a significant reduction in S. aureus count at 9th days of cold storage with reduction percent of 68.9 and 78.3%; furthermore, E. coli showed significant reduction (48.1 and 75.3%) in the treated samples with 1 and 2% LEO, respectively. Moreover, lemon oil showed significant retardation in the histamine levels in the treated samples in comparison with the untreated control sample, where the progression levels were significantly lower than the untreated control sample (112.5%) to be 36.2 and 21.1% in the treated samples with lemon oil 1 and 2%. Conclusively, lemon oil showed a strong antibacterial effect with a potential adverse effect on the formation of histamine in chilled fish fillet making it as a promising natural food-additive for bacterial and chemical quality enhancement.