FiSH, Bristol: ‘Superbly fresh’ — restaurant review
Financial Times Article by Tim Hayward (OCTOBER 1st 2020)
FISH & BAR RESTAURANT:
It’s a big converted barge with kitchens below and a spacious dining room in a glass box on deck. From its launch in 1986 until just a few months ago, it was called the Glassboat, a star of the Bristol restaurant scene, a glossy hangout for the local worthies and men-who-lunch. It was owned by Arne Ringner, a restaurant entrepreneur who was also responsible for the ever-successful Lido restaurant in Clifton. Initially, Glassboat was a hit. In fact, quite a few of Bristol’s disproportionately large population of great cooks passed through its kitchens at one point or another. But in recent years it had frankly declined and at the beginning of Covid-19, its doors were closed.
As lockdown lifted, it was back as FiSH, the dining room redesigned to create huge airy spaces between tables, a complete fish-and-chip-shop rig up by the bow to serve the takeaway trade and the downstairs kitchen realigning behind a simple menu of West Country fish. It’s not so much a “pivot” as a gloriously agile pirouette.
We started with some extremely competent rollmop herrings that, on a sunny afternoon on tree-lined Welsh Back, played beautifully into a sort of Amsterdam-Copenhagen vibe and cried out for a crisp and icy lager. A Provençal fish soup came in a vast bowl, recognisably a soupe de poisson that might have graced a dockside table in Marseille but enhanced by dill and curry flavourings. I know. It sounds utterly mad, but if the dentists don’t reopen soon and I end up on a liquid diet, I’ll be happy with this stuff and a thick straw for the rest of my life.
My main was vast. A piece of Devon ray about the size of a spinnaker, roasted on the bone in brown butter and capers. This is by no means an innovative dish. It’s one of those simple French preparations that, done as well as it is here, is impossible to improve on . . . unless you happen to have a complete fish-and-chip-shop rig up by the bow. I felt guilty about my bastard chippie/brasserie order for about eight seconds and then the sun arced through the window on to my plate, its golden light melding with the melting butter, gilding the tanned flank of the fish and pooling round a stout, four-square chip. A breeze blew off the water, the rowlocks of a passing coxed four creaked and I thought, sod the French fry. The French could never make chips this good.