Deadline approaches and I am despairing of ever being able to find a single positive thing to say about a Thai restaurant with a menu that might well have been cooked up by a gap-year backpacker, who remembers pretty much nothing after stepping off the plane in South-East Asia.
That is until I stumble across mention of the newly opened Fish, on MacCurtain St, in Cork’s city’s “Food Quarter”.
It is just one week old, normally completely off-limits to me as a reviewer, a firm believer in allowing time for a new venture to settle in before I put it to the test.
However, me and The Progeny are glad of any excuse to get out of the house.
We hightail it into town on a miserable wet Wednesday night.
The menu is divided into four sections. “Traditional Fish & Chips” is self-explanatory and, from that, we select two dishes. Haddock, with triple-cooked chips, peas, and a choice of tartar sauce or curry sauce.
Good batter is perhaps a little overdone, cooking too fast on the outside, somewhat claggy within, but the fish is perfect — sweet, savoury, shining like mother of pearl.
The chips are very fine, indeed. Precision and care afforded airy, delicious peas, laced with fresh mint — an early indicator of considered delivery.
Tartar sauce is decent, but would excel if acidity was adjusted sharply upwards of what was served.
La Daughter selects from the same section: Calamari, dusted in paprika-seasoned flour, deep fried for her, rather than the grilled option.
They too are good, nailing the sweet spot between tender and chewy.
The bang-on-trend “Street” menu is littered with sinfully tempting options that have me skittering up and down the list like a starving goat, wondering if I can possibly order them all. We settle for three.
Fritto misto de mare in a cone is an Italian seaside classic, for a body to snack on while ambling along the promenade, living their best dolce vita.
Actually, it is served in a little cardboard tray — though cone is also available — but that’s perfectly acceptable on such a mouldy night, when casual al fresco perambulation is right off the cards.
It is another magic combo. A handful of calamari and off-cuts of fish, all battered and tripping the light fantastic, with a smashing fresh dill aioli as a dancing partner.
It is also a very canny means of sampling the entirety of the fried fish menu, but I had been ordering earlier on an empty belly and canniness was late to the party.
Blooming Onion is a novelty, the kind that makes you smile even before you eat it. It’s a wild and spiky-looking creation, bronzed as a sea urchin that fell asleep on the sunbed, but delivery is sufficiently on point to merit its inclusion.
A whole onion is “cored”, sliced almost to the base, dipped in batter with an excellent in-house “spicebag” blend of 12 spices and deep-fried, and served up with sriracha mayo, crisp crunchy batter yielding to lush caramelised onion, my personal sugar apotheosis.
Pickled fennel and kohlrabi is understatedly effective: Fennel, kohlrabi, and carrot, shaved into wafer-thin slices, subjected to a sweet pickling — if the pickle is a smidgeon overly sugared and under-acidulated, a wonderfully generous hand with fresh dill saves the day.
The third section, “Contemporary” indicates a level of ambition some steps up from mere “chipper”, despite the hipper addition of “Street”.
The “Contemporary” section offers the kind of deceptively casual seafood dishes that might fetch up on a terrace table, looking out onto a moonlit Mediterranean.
Swordfish steak, glistening in harissa sauce, passes by my envious snout to another customer, but I am conscious I have already ordered more than enough, even if No 2 Son is capable of unparalleled feats of teenage gluttony.
I haggle shamelessly and manage to double up a portion of butterfly prawns (which are served with lemon rice and kohlrabi pickle) and octopus (with grilled spuds, oak smoked ham, onion confit, dill oil, and salsa verde) shorn of the usual sides.
The grilled prawns, oozing parsley and garlic butter, could only be improved by a crisp rosé and a summer breeze. We proceed to savage the criminally addictive crustaceans like hyenas on a health farm.
Octopus with salsa verde is rustic, rough, and right up my alley.
The Progeny are also quite smitten, describing it — not incorrectly — as “kind of like a sea sausage”.
I find the fourth section of the menu a tad redundant in a venue named Fish.
“Eco”, reflecting the culinary heritage of two of Fish’s three partners, industry veterans Chris Prinsloo and Dave Halpin Jr — son of the late, great Dave Sr, founder of the iconic eponymous Douglas restaurant.
There are just two dishes, possibly a commercial imperative to snare the last of the fish-loathing heathens, yet to be converted to magical maritime mastication: Chicken curry, with rice or chips; and a Double Smash Burger.
However, the latter tells its own story of the third partner, the burger’s creator —and fiercely proud of it! — young Corkman Jerome Williamson, who, though just 20, already has several years behind him in Pearl Brasserie, and then Michelin-starred Glover’s Alley, both based in Dublin.
Ahead of him — I fancy — is a very bright future indeed, for he is deeply invested in many of the epicurean embellishments that lift Fish out of the ordinary.
Just one week old, there is still obviously plenty of tweaking ahead in the restaurant’s future but, on this showing, the very fantastic Fish may well prove to be a catch of the year.
- Food: 8
- Service: 9
- Value: 9
- Atmosphere: 8 (if you choose to eat at a counter)