The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Seafood Impressive restaurant for grown-ups that is reeling them in again and again
WHO knows exactly what age I was when I learned of the marvels of fish renaming. Young anyway, when the old man in our tiny kitchen tugging a stocking of skin from the tail of a fat-faced old monkfish chuckled at the raspy, sandpapery sullen-looking dogfish we had enthusiastically brought from the beach.
“You could sell that as rock salmon, in some restaurants anyway,” he said. “And this,” he added, pointing to the firm white monkfish tail, “as prawn.”
He was a lover of all fish, was the old man, though we kids recoiled at the monsters of the deep that scuttled around the empty bath or were expertly filleted on the slab, but he wouldn’t have recognised the name stone bass. Simply because I don’t think the marketing people had invented it by then.
Shade-fish, salmon-bass or even meagre apparently not being glamorous enough anymore. But he would have approved of what the Fish People Cafe have done to it tonight. Seared at such intense heat that the skin is crisped, the meat underneath runs from an appetising golden to creamy and juicy white. Debs has just said how much she is enjoying it and the deep, dark spinach it sits on. The fish I’m eating is from the actual genuine sea and not farmed – though fish have been farmed since pre-Roman times.
My John Dory was landed at Fraserburgh; two more juicy fillets, lightly browned, a sea of peas and a spiky, interesting masala spiced shrimp butter to fire it punchily into life.
Flawless. There were fat crumbed and deep-fried batons of monkfish to start, more glamorous than prawn nowadays, then a smoky fishcake with paprika mayo, lime and caper berries.
Luca polished off a bowl of marinated anchovies, boosted, I suppose, by the Fish People Cafe kitchen with the addition of chilli lemon and parsley. A very good and very confidently prepared meal.
I’ve reviewed this cafe before, squeezed in as it is beside the underground station on Scotland Street, all glass front, polished wood and on this chill November school night warmed by a
The Fish People Cafe