Spicy Fish Restaurant

I quite enjoyed my experience at Spicy Fish. It’s Chinese cuisine, and the restaurant is casual and fairly small.
I went on the weekend, and it was pretty packed. We in fact got the final table (but the turnaround is pretty quick so if you do need to wait it wont be for long).
I thought the service was good. They were efficient, and friendly, and to top it all off the food was pretty decent.

I wasn’t altogether enamoured with my dining experience here.
The eatery is nice enough, it’s very casual so I wasn’t expecting anything too special, but I was still disappointed.
The wait staff were unobservant and slow. It took them too long to come over to our table with menus and then again to take our order. When they finally did, we ordered jasmine tea and two Tsing Tao beers. The drinks arrived after the food did, which is just wrong. Then the vegetarian dumplings we had ordered arrived but they were pork ones, so of course these had to be sent back, and thank goodness it wasn’t the only vegetarian at the table who discovered the dumpling’s meaty filling.
The spicy fish we ordered wasn’t all that spicy and we’ve definitely had this dish in a few other szechuan eateries in Melbourne and enjoyed it a lot more. The flavour was nice enough though and the serving HUGE. The claypot eggplant was too sweet and had tonnes of black vinegar in it, which threw the balance of flavours off. The best dish was the cold starter of silken tofu with preserved egg which was a hit with everyone at the table.
Just as a side note in case anyone from szechuan restaurants in Melbourne reads this — with regards to the spicy fish dish, why not add less fish meat, but make it a better type of fish? I’m sick of fatty basa, and putting loads of it in the dish doesn’t make up for it being the most insipid white fish around. I’d happily pay more for a better quality, meatier and more substantial white fish.

The name of this place put me off for awhile. I don’t eat much seafood, so I just wasn’t interested. I really should have looked more closely, because there is quite a bit of variety at Spicy Fish.
It’s traditional Szechuan cuisine, according to the menu. Not being Szechuan myself, I’ll have to trust them. There’s definitely a bit of heat that makes you aware that you’re not having the usual Cantonese dining experience though.
I tried a chicken dish which I quite liked. Something with chilli in it, but I suppose that’s descriptive of most dishes here. The chicken itself was tender and really quite pleasant, which was a nice surprise as ordering chicken dishes in Asian restaurants often leaves me disappointed. My wife ordered dumplings which she really enjoyed too.
The service was alright. Not fantastic, but better than many of the places in the immediate vicinity.