The Manhattan Fish Market

The restaurant was full on a weekend evening and even at half-past eight, people were still streaming in. "Feel good" theme restaurant, laid back with a birthday-celebration atmosphere, generous portons- it wasn't difficult to see MFM's appeal, and I get the feeling that people here like to share and eat off the same plate. *Gut feel*


Garlic Butter Mussels

For starters, we had the garlic butter mussels and sizzling Louisiana prawns. Looks like soup, doesn't it? Well it isn't.. The mussels drowned in thickish sauce (mussel bobbing anyone?), which I found too creamy and nothing too spectacular.


Louisiana Prawns

As for the Louisiana prawns, the prawns were deep fried and served bare on a hot plate; then Louisiana shrimp sauce is poured onto the hot plate and the dish sizzles and sputters theatrically. The Louisiana shrimp sauce tasted like pipping hot thousand island sauce, which incidentally tastes quite alright (did I say just say?!). As if to answer the all-important "What should we do with the leftover sauce?" dilemma, both starters were served with plain baguette, which would have been better off toasted first.



I love my fried food.

You know seriously, MFM isn't for the faint-hearted. We order the all-inclusive Fisherman's Giant Fried Platter (CODE RED on New York mayor Bloomberg's trans-fat radar), where each offering was clad in this season's hottest shade: Golden Brown. Out of care and concern for my dear readers, I would recommend you share this platter with at least 2 people- unless you happen to be one of those "can't seem to gain any weight no matter how hard I try" people (then i HA-TE you).



An extremely heart-clogging hearty affair, the "Fisherman's Giant" platter includes calamari, fish fillets, prawns, mushrooms, fries and butter rice.

A rundown of the grub:

Thinly battered and visually-peppered (though it wasn't the slightest bit peppery), the Size 0 calamari scramps were too insignificant to provide any crunch or satisfaction.


Fish fillets

The fish fillets here were reminiscent of fish fingers, whose batter limped miserably when left on the side for too long. On hindsight, the Whole Fish Platter would have been a more satisfying option. I liked the subtle flavours captured within the butter rice and the fries were not bad too...


Mushrooms in the center; calamari on the right

Although, the mushrooms looked out of place on the "Fisherman's platter" I don't think anybody minded its knobby-sized juicy qualities. The huge prawns reeled me in with its kick-ass batter and as if the meal wasn't detrimental enough, I lost count of the number of crunchy prawn heads I devoured. Absolutely wicked.


You had me at 'Hello'


Dips

The dips were definitely aligned to suit the Asian palate. I like the chili dip the most as it helped cut the urghy-too-much-fried stuff feeling...


Caesar Salad

We order a salad to "forgive our sins and deliver us from evil". Yeah, one salad for the five of us.. haha.. I hate to break it to you folks, caesar salad is neither healthy nor UNfattening.. in fact, if you were going to have that, you might as well have a steak. Well, that is unless you order it cheese-less and dressing-less -which is what we did. Needless to say, I didn't give a toss-up and thought it was EXTRA-ordinary.

We asked what the dessert of the month was and it was hilarious because our waiter replied, "A-LOW-HAH Ba-NAH-NAH Fritters (Aloha Banana Fritters)" in the most depanned, gawd-I-can't-believe-I'm-saying-this-for-the-200th time tone. When we responded less than enthusistically, he then offered, "Tea-RAH-Mi-Su?" Another hmmm. Then it was his turn to turn on the enthusism, "Mudpie...We also have MUDPIE.. If you don't want the A-LOW-HAH Ba-NAH-NAH Fritter, you could have the MUDPIE... " He made sound like he had been slogging over the dessert and would be terribly gratful if somebody ordered it.



Honestly, I had already decided on the dessert before the mains. While I'm not a brownie person but today, I had a strange craving for vanilla ice cream and chocolate brownie. Here at Manhattan's, the processed faux cherry and whipped cream topping gave it an old-school feel. The brownie was layered with nuts and very moist (doesn't it just peeve you when the brownie crumbles); though there weren't signs of vanilla pods but I could never summon enough cyncism to pick on the good ol' vanilla ice cream. The heated exchange between ice cream and warm brownie made this a yabba-dabba-do.

I keep forgetting that The Manhattan Fish Market appeals to a different crowd altogether and I shouldn't be pitching New York Times or Makansutra standards here. For a theme restaurant, I felt my visit was encouraging enough.

Manhattan Fish Market

68 Orchard Road
#06-07 Plaza Singapura
Tel: 6835 9300

6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#02-79/90 The Central @ Clarke Quay
Tel: 6534 0973