DEBORAH ROSS
irhad my niece — the little one. aged 5 — to stay again recently and her quote of the week came one night when I was putting her to bed and she asked of my partner. 'Do you find him boring?' In his defence I should say that she largely feels this way because her uncle simply cannot get wildly excited about nail varnish, playing schools or Barbie. Also, in his defence . . . no, that's about it. As it happens, I am writing this in the evening and I've just been downstairs to ask if he minds if I use her quote but, as ever, he's fast asleep in front of the telly, lying across the sofa as immovably and monolithically as a fallen standing stone. And this, I know, is where he will stay until 2 a.m. or thereabouts, unless, in the meantime, I make for the remote control and switch over, in which case he will open a malevolent eye and say, 'I was watching that. Turn back.' This is very much a man thing. It may even be a boring-man thing. However, in his defence.. . no. Why pretend?
So, things that are boring. Drinking two litres of water a day is boring. (Although I've stopped now. I just don't have the bladder for it, I'm afraid.) Stopping for petrol is boring. ER's quite boring now. I'm certainly boring, judging by the number of people I meet at parties who say 'I'm just popping to the lot), won't be a minute' and then never return, even though I'm still pathetically waiting there several hours, if not several weeks, later. Even Barbie is quite boring, although when I suggested as much to my niece, when I put it to her that I might be Barbied out, she looked at me in utter disbelief and said, 'Barbie is never boring.' Unlike her uncle, one supposes. And then there is FishWorks, which is also quite boring, although I'm not yet sure why. FishWorks is a great idea. It may even be a brilliant one. It was founded by Mitch Tonks, a one-time accountant whose passion for seafood and the fact he could not buy decent fish locally (can anyone? Everything in our local fish shop seems to be 'previously frozen') led him to open his own fishmonger's, FishWorks, in Bath. Its success then led him to open a cookery school, add a restaurant, and open up other shops around the country (Bristol, Christchurch, Chiswick). As someone who loves seafood but is often rather too scared to cook it at home — how dull is that? — I am truly, truly excited about this place.
We go to the Chiswick one with my niece, her older sister and their parents. It's on a small, trendy street just off Chiswick High Street, with a sea-themed blue awning outside and a mouth-watering window on to the fishmonger's: bream, mullet, crab, sea bass, oysters, prawns the size of fists, winkles, and cockles so plump they are almost off-putting, like big fat juicy swollen bogeys (what a thing to die for. I am thinking). The fish are largely flown in directly from Cornwall, and look fresh enough to leap their way into the kitchen by themselves. The girls, by the way, enjoy poking them in the eye with their fingers, then recoiling in total hysterics. This is such a good game that we're promptly told our table is ready, would we like to come through now?
A friendly waiter leads us into the restaurant. My brother-in-law thinks he looks rather like a cod — quite gapingjawed — and wonders if you have to look like a fish to work here. Possibly. The restaurant? Well, this is where disappointment starts to set in a bit. Mitch Tonks is, apparently, the presenter of Carlton's Fish Food programme and the restaurant looks like a daytime TV set via Ikea. Everything is an inoffensive birchblond. Birch-blond floors, birch-blond chairs, birch-blond tables. In short, wholly uncharacterful, in that boring birch-blond kind of way. True, the cheerful paintings of fishing villages aren't birch-blond, but neither are they paintings. They're digital reproductions of paintings.
And so what? you might well ask. Who gives a stuff, so long as the fish is good? True enough, but it just gives the whole place a rather uninteresting, Pizza Express-ish, Loch Fyne-ish feel. I like a bit of quirkiness, but am simply not getting it. I think that even if you didn't know that FishWorks was part of a chain, you'd kind of sense it. What may have started as a 'winning' formula now seems merely formulaic.
A waitress in very black eye make-up — a rather fetching trout doing a Dusty Springfield impression, according to my brother-in-law — brings us big hunks of bread on wooden boards with little holes cut into it. One hole is for garlic mayonnaise, the other for salsa verde, which you dip the bread into. Delicious. Then it's on to the business of choosing what to have. You can choose from the menu, from the fish counter or from the blackboard specials, which this evening seem to come with a lot of crossings-out. Salted anchovies from the Cantabrian sea with olive oil and garlic? All gone. Grilled sardines with parsley and preserved lemons? All gone. Murderous cockles as big and fat as swollen bogeys? No thanks. In the end, I decide to start with the saltbaked Madagascan prawns. They are large, which is a good job, as you only get three, but unsatisfyingly dry and unsalty. My partner describes his starter — spaghetti with clams, chilli, garlic and parsley — as 'curiously bland', and he should know, after all. The girls start with 'a plate of our own smoked salmon', which is fine. Perhaps too vivid on the orange front, but still fine. Next, I have the whole grilled sea bass with rosemary, olive oil and sea salt. This is good, the fish oozing a pearly, fragrant, succulent freshness. The rosemary is there but, thankfully, not overpowering. The fish should really be the star in these instances. My brother-inlaw likes his roasted cod fillet with parsley sauce and mash, but blames himself for not being more adventurous. 'I wish I'd had crab.' The girls order red mullet from the fish counter, but had more fun poking it in the eye than they have eating it. It's massively overcooked. We all have the hot chocolate pudding for desert, and it's gorgeous.
FishWorks is not cheap. On average, £7410 for starter portions, £15 for mains, and side dishes are extra. With two bottles of wine, we managed to spend £230. I'm not saying FishWorks is bad. It isn't. It just lacks a certain something. Atmosphere? Definitely. Plus a certain unpredictability, perhaps. I don't know what FishWorks does when it clocks off for the day, but if it falls asleep in front of the telly while firmly clutching the remote, I wouldn't be at all surprised.
FishWorks, 6 Turn ham Green Terrace, London W4. 020 8994 0086
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