Fish Market

If you head to a restaurant on the Dalmatian coast, a tasty, whole grilled squid with heaps of crunchy greens and potatoes will set you back around £7. Is it 100% perfectly cooked? It might not be, but everything is sweeter when you spend very little and have the bonus of a beautiful sea view.

But we’re not out and about by a Croatian beach, we’re across the road from Liverpool Street station, at one of the new restaurants within the Old Bengal Warehouse, a Grade II listed building that was owned by the East India Company at the time when the British Empire was trading spices and tea via the Docklands. Run by the D&D group, this is their biggest project to date, comprising a bar, a wine shop, and two restaurants: New Street Grill, and the more casual Fish Market.

Despite, or perhaps because of having been open for exactly one day, it’s full with the exception of one table. The theme is, in their own words, the British seaside: the ceiling is aqua-blue and both napkins and waitresses sport stripy naval motifs; the menu has simple dishes like the fish of the day (a whole fish grilled or steamed, served on or off the bone and with your choice of sauce) as well as old fashioned fare like cockles and whelks.

We order the shellfish platter for two, a large iced tray with rock oysters, Cornish crab, king prawns, clams, mussels and a whole host of mini-crustaceans: little brown shrimps, winkles, and snail-like cockles and whelks. With such fiddly shellfish we’d have expected a bowl of water to rinse our fingers with, but tut tut! There isn’t one.

Today’s fish of the day includes mackerel, lemon sole, sea bass and sea bream. The lemon sole with herb butter is exquisite, well cooked, flaking away easily from the bones, with a light buttery flavour and a deliciously herby grilled crust. The beer battered fish is haddock, and it’s also very good, firm and fleshy, coated in a thin wispy batter, served with mushy peas and triple cooked chips. We’re impressed with the side dishes too: the creamed spinach is a surprising revelation, fresh, lightly salted and rich, and the broccoli is given oomph with anchovies and chopped chilli.

Happily the same degree of skill applies to the desserts, the blackcurrant and port jelly is so tart it borders on bitter, but together with a sweet, fruity muffin and clotted cream it’s really quite good, while the apple pie filled with spiced cooked fruit is equally pleasing.

Sleek, with London prices (a three course meal for two with wine is around £100) and aimed at city folk, Fish Market couldn’t be more different to a seaside eatery, but that’s no reason not to enjoy it.