Food for the brain -- and pocket

Fish is by far the healthiest flesh choice. Rich in essential Omega Three fatty acids and other useful goodies, our intrepid healthy-eater, Brian Berkman, weighed in at Blowfish Restaurant.

The menu is simple – fish, fish and more fish. A Thai submenu includes duck, chicken with cashews and stir-fry. Our charming and professional server, Bianca, talked us through three fish and seafood-laden fridges, but without a printed menu I panicked at what the price might be.

All dishes are flame grilled, and served with either chips or rice as well as stir-fry vegetables for an additional R8. The choice included calamari, monk fish, butter fish, kingklip, dorado, mussel cracker, sword fish and yellow-fin tuna. As shellfish they offered prawns, tiger prawns, langoustines and crayfish.

As we were seated at a sturdy light-wood table that the Scandinavians so enjoy, I felt the legs of the ample rattan chair give way under my weight on the tiled floor and when I explained my predicament to a passing waiter, the chair was whisked away and replaced with a well constructed wooden one. No mess, no fuss.

Noisy floor

The maitre‘d perfectly and elegantly opened our bubbly and as he poured I had to remind myself that I wasn’t sitting in a five-star, silver-service restaurant. There were a lot of people making a lot of noise as the floor tiles and hard furniture is unforgiving.

I would have preferred there to be a blackboard menu with sample sizes and prices. If I had known that my selection of a cut of Dorado (R21, 73) and a Mussel Cracker steak (R20, 18) would only come just over R40 I would have asked for more or perhaps another fish to be added to the selection.

Ethan selected the butter fish (R18, 03) which was very light in colour, dense and oily while Edward asked for a Yellow-fin tuna steak (R25, 30), thinly sliced and served raw on top of his Greek Salad.

My fish was superbly cooked and the stir-fry vegetables were fresh, juicy, crunchy and delicious. I find Butter fish too fatty so I tasted the smallest amount, which offered some resistance to the bite and then melted. My dorado and musselcracker complemented each other; both being firm and sweet.

Spicy sauce

Sauces were brought to the table on a wooden slab. The usual suspects were lemon and garlic butters, which I studiously avoided in favour of a sweet chilli and apricot sauce and a spicier chilli vinegar-based sauce. These were both delicious and I guess were low-fat options.

Bianca again offered us a wide range of desserts: choc mousse, vanilla and ginger ice creams, malva pud, lemon sorbet and others I don’t recall.

Edward ordered the ginger ice cream, which I tasted and really enjoyed. Ethan had the chocolate mousse, which was surprisingly light once you managed to get past its cream crown. I opted for the virtuous lemon sorbet with zero fat and equal amounts of lemony astringency tempered with sugar. Delicious.

The most amazing thing about our experience was that I didn’t once feel I was losing out by choosing healthy-eating options.

Our bill, including R25 corkage, and tip came to R200 -- a third less than most of our restaurant meals.

Blowfish Food Emporium is operated by the Codfather. Find them at Dolphin Beach, 1 Marine Drive, Table View. Tel: 021-556-5464.