Purring with happy diners, the family-run Cape Town Fish Market in Bloubergstrand is just the place when you’re chasing good food from the sea. Appropriately, it overlooks the ocean and it’s refreshing that the Daly family runs the business hands-on. In a clean-lined and spacious interior, eager waitrons stand at the ready for your command.
Here comes a dish of Prawn Popcorn – deep-fried tempura prawn meat padded with rich mayo. The rustling, golden-brown Baby Squid is served with just the right dash of warming heat from the Robata sauce.
On the sushi front, deep-fried spicy crab rolls are bolstered by a seriously intense seven-spice mayo, spring onions and a sweet soy sauce. And who can say no to the Tempura prawn and cream cheese rolls? They’re beautifully wrapped with prawn and avocado and topped with a properly sustaining splash of Japanese mayo and sweet chilli sauce.
For mains, a wholesome West Coast Potjie, the size of a mini-submarine, is filled with fish, prawn meat, mussels, calamari and veg – cooked in a pleasingly powerful garlic sauce. Go big or go home with the Hout Bay Platter. It has a two hake fillets; fried calamari strips, tentacles and tubes; mussels; two fish cakes; and prawns atop a savoury rice pillow, plus moreish potato wedges and tartare sauce.
This is the feel of a restaurant confidently establishing diner relationships, while sticking firmly to the principle that made it in the first place: good seafood without pretentiousness.
Book: 021 5545962; Shop 42 Seaside Village, Otto du Plessis Drive.
