Café Fish

I went to this restaurant with my sister and mother for my sisters belated birthday lunch. The staff were pretty friendly, the décor was a bit depressing though. We livened things up with our cheery presence of course. ;-)
The food was okay, but portions were a bit small. After reading the menu I thought they were pretty reasonably priced, until I realised just how much (little) food you get.
The chowder and pan seared sea bass were ok, had to add some seasoning to the chowder though. The chips were amazing! Perfectly crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. I could have happily and easily eaten just those. In fact, the chips and the dessert were the best part.
I was annoyed at one point to see other customers eating fish and chips. The annoyance was because it wasn’t on the menu, and if I had known we could have ordered fish and chips, I would have!
I had a gingerbread pudding with a toffee sauce and Bramley apple sorbet for dessert which was out of this world! I could have eaten several of those. hehe
I almost had a heart attack when the bill came. Almost £100 for 3 people?
We had bread and butter, 3 mains and 3 desserts with an extra order of chips and a bowl of chowder. Apparently the Prosecco was £27! If I had known I would have chosen to stop drinking on another day!
So our experience was okay. The only memorable part of the meal were the chips and the dessert, which is also the only reason I’d ever go back.

Café Fish is the perfect place for seafood lovers. Set in a lovely, opulent Georgian building it’s greatest asset is it’s food. Which comes in quite handy when running a restaurant.
There’s only one niggle I have, and i’ll get that out of the way first. And bear in mind this was ordering from the Lunch menu. The cost. Eating at a seafood restaurant is an expensive business anywhere these days, but the drinks are pricey and you can’t help but feel the portions are a little disappointing.
The menu changes almost daily, depending on produce. Not only a mark of a great eaterie but also it’s kitchen. Ingredients are always fresh and dishes well executed and reassuringly prepared in view of the restaurant. Waiting staff are also very friendly, attentive and know their menus.
As I said, the menu often changes but always offers a fantastic variety of fish and shellfish cooked numerous ways and always to perfection.
I have been numerous times before and will continue to return because the seafood is some of the best in the country and the service is faultless.

After our visit for lunch, last year, I did say that we’d come back to try the evening menu. I’m really glad that we did, as it was absolutely tremendous! Their starter of salmon and scallop sashimi was one of the best dishes I’ve sampled in all quests. We were a fairly demanding table; the service was excellent, throughout. A really enjoyable evening was had by all.
Overall, we said: «Café Fish was an absolute winner. The evening service was as good as the lunchtime and then some. The excellence of the seafood with which we were presented was incredibly impressive. I would urge you to pay it a visit, very soon.»

We made a return visit to Café Fish, having last visited it a couple of years ago, in it’s former Leith location. Our last visit was disappointing. The problem back then was small portions, limited choice, and high prices. I put it down to them having a bad day when we visited. Unfortunately things haven’t changed. It’s an overrated restaurant serving small portions of adequately cooked food at inflated prices. Drinks are expensive too, the cheapest bottles of wine being £18-£19. Don’t be fooled by the so called fixed price menu. Most of the dishes have a hefty £5-£6 supplement, and the dishes that don’t have a supplement are invariably sold out. Edinburgh has many excellent restaurants serving fish at reasonable prices. This isn’t one of them. I’ve been scalped. I won’t go again.

The food was good.
We had octopus confit and oysters to start and for mains we had the duck leg confit and the seabass. Oh, and loads of chips.
I was SO pleased by the freshness of the oysters and the texture of the duck confit.
We also had some lovely glasses of wine.
SO, three stars only because our service was atrocious. First we were nearly denied our table because they stopped using the service I booked it with (the restaurant was empty at the time we came, too). Second we tried to order around some food allergies and our server was horrific about it. It was clearly a big deal for him to have to check with the kitchen and he offered no substitutes. Here was an exchange: I’ll take the masala without the raitha the masala has butter in it. oh, ok well the cod that has a cream sauce. (do you want me to move through each menu item???)
I won’t be coming back and I wont be suggesting it. I can get great oysters elsewhere. This is Edinburgh; they have a sh*t tonne of oysters.

Operating out of the Stockbridge site previously occupied by Zanzero this is the new home for Café Fish.
Business wasn’t too brisk on Monday evening but the service was attentive (possibly overso in terms of checking how we were getting along with only two other tables occupied) and swift with empty glasses of water being topped up regularly.
My serrano ham, mozzarella balls & peach starter was tasty and well presented and the haddock on a borlotti bean & spring onion base was well cooked and filling. Overall two courses for £22 was good vfm although they could maybe do with getting in some wine around the £12 mark.
Not then somewhere I see myself going on a regular basis (the acoustics could I think be a problem at busy times) but my experience chimed well with a friend’s recent account so it seems you could do worse in the city in terms of fish restaurants pitched at this level of the market.

We observed Café Fish more-​or-​less as it was installed and were excited to try it out. It’s right in that peculiar stretch of Leith outside the Shore but within the rapidly gentrifying nook of Henderson Street near Sophie’s, The Vaults and The Plumed Horse. Even from the outside, the décor looks lovely and the menu inviting. They’ve made a point about locally sourcing their seafood, which always strikes us as a positive step so that even before we stepped through their revolving door we were well disposed towards giving them a glowing review.
Inside, the décor continues to impress: brushed steel bartop, tables and light fixtures, exposed rock walls, tall, bright windows offset by a couple of twee church pews tucked in the corners. We were seated at one of these pews, or rather my wife was; I sat in a comfortable black plastic chair with my back to the bar.
The menu is, unsurprisingly, dominated by seafood: smoked salmon, oysters, sea bass and cod, for example, as well as a single beef and one veggie (not vegan) dish. The menu encourages you to order 2– or 3-​course sets, with a basic 2-​course running £19, though certain dishes included added supplement prices. We opted to share a starter and a dessert (effectively each getting a 2-​course, simply staggering the course). We had been drinking already, so opted not to go for wine, but simply got a bottle of bubbly water.
Our shared starter was a Thai red mullet sitting on a bed of rocket, mange tout, carrot and red peppers. It was a delicious starter, properly proportioned, with lovely, fragrant ginger, lime and sesame seed.
At this point, we were in good humour and enjoying our meal. There were a few negative points. They had been a bit mean with the bread basket: two slices apiece and we had to ask for butter twice. We also became aware that the lovely décor was possibly not as well thought-​out for noise mitigation, as the café was explosively loud. Finally, with the restaurant quite busy and my back to the bar, I began to feel rather pressed in by waiters and patrons attempting to squeeze past. For all this, we were overall quite happy.
It was with the main course that our pleasant feelings began to fade a bit. Not that the quality of the food failed. I had ordered wild turbot, which arrived nicely grilled on a bed of absolutely top-​notch creamed spinach and accompanied by some reasonably tasty mashed potatoes. My wife’s monkfish with salsa was likewise exquisitely prepared and served with a small portion of really excellent chips. The problem was that, like the bread, the portions were parsimonious at best. We seemed to sail through our main courses in no time at all.
The dessert continued in this same vein: we shared a tasty, well-​made, and very small chocolate tart. Our cups of coffee were fine, but we had to laugh that they had included a piece of fudge with each… a very, very, very small piece.
Add to this that my wife’s pew was getting rather hard on her posterior, and the service was disorganised and a bit slow, and our overall impression was not all that it could have been.
I want to say a word about the loos. You’re wondering why. I think that loos say a lot about a place: how well its been thought out, how clean it is. Café Fish excelled in this regard. The brushed steel motif carried on inside and it was spotlessly clean. Perfume accompanied the soap in the ladies room, and high powered Dyson hand dryers (the best in the business, I’d say) dispatched the water in seconds flat.
Overall, we stepped out for £45 plus tip. This struck us as rather steep for one starter, two small mains, one dessert, a bottle of water and two coffees. We weren’t unhappy, but neither were we jumping for joy. Café Fish is still new and many of our complaints are remediable. Hopefully they will iron out the rough patches and a really stunning restaurant will result.