Manhattan Fish Market (Plaza Singapura)

Whenever my friends and I go to Plaza Singapura, we will always be spoilt for choice and end up at Manhattan's Fish Market. Well, partly because it has a great reputatioN!

In a nutshell,

Staff-- Really friendly, Patient ( can put up with 10 girls asking for tartar sauce like 4 times?)

Bill-- I like the mentos in the bill haha

Ambience-- when there's not too many people its pretty nice.I get the fisherman feeling.Best corner is the one inside- TRY TO EAT THERE! But it's only open for dinner tho.

Food-- Set lunch is VALUE FOR $$. GOOD!!!

Especially the fish and Chips which is their signature dish.

Its 9.90 base cost and you get a soup which is usually shrimp paste ( i like ) but you can upgrade to clam chowder for around $1.50.. and a drink, hot/cold... their glasses for the cold drinks are super big la!

Food Review:

Fish and Chips: Chips- not too oily. Sprinkled with red ground pepper which is really tasty Fish- really crispy, although i feel that the batter is a tad overdone. Always get the really bloated feeling after wolfing down the fish. But well they say, bloatedness is HAPPINESS!

Baked Fish and Garden Herbs - MUCH BETTER THAN FISH & CO! tell u guys man never go to fish and co and order that. It's not only more expensive but the fish is of inferior quality. YEP.. I remember the veins in the fish leeering out at meeee

- Not too filling and is a great health choice if you are really into veggies! i like it =)

Great hangout to go to if your budget is around $13 and above!

But CAVEAT

Dinner's pretty exp =X

As for the flaming platter,the rest have summed it up well! YummIlicious!

I only been to this place once and I have to say that I am not going back again!

The service is slow and hard to get the attention of the “busy” waiters.

The waiting time for the food is also quite slow even though I told the waiter to hasten as we got a show to catch soon!

The food. Well jz say I prefer Fish and Co better!

So overall, to me it is jz another copycat of Fish and Co.

***Updated on 12 Mar 08***

Decided to head to The Manhattan Fish Market @ Plaza Singapura for dinner since there are great reviews in Yebber and while waiting for my movie to start. So with slightly high expectation, we headed towards the restaurant. Well it took sometime for us to decide between this or Fish & Co, as we did not have a very nice time when we first visited it ages ago.

We are surprised to see that there was no queue, as from past experience, when it was dinner time; there was always a small queue outside. Maybe we were lucky to reach the place slightly before dinner time. When we reached the entrance, we were ushered to our seats. The decoration of the place is pretty much like Fish & Co. Not surprised to find it that way, as their bosses used to be from Fish & Co in the first place (if I am not wrong). Even the pans they served their seafood in, used to be the same as Fish & Co, until Fish & Co took action on it then they replaced it with square pans. They also have large LCD showing people scuba diving and underwater scenes. All these just make me want to go scuba diving now.

Back to the dinner, so when we were seated, we were given the menu and nothing else. While we were deciding what to eat, they did not even serve us ice water. Minus points for their service. The place also started to get crowded at the same and they seem understaffed as well, all the waiters and waitresses, including the managers are running around. Took us 5 mins before we can get attention of one waiter to place our order. The irony thing is we are seated right next to the service counter and the kitchen where all of them are running in and out. Minus point again.

So we decided to order the following:

Fried Country Mushroom @ $9.90: This is the only good thing out of the whole meal. The portion is generous. The mushrooms are light coated with a thin layer of batter. It is not over-fried and does not have an oily after taste. The mushroom is full of its natural flavor and juicy as well. The dip provided compliments the mushroom well. I am quite surprised that they served such good mushroom here. To me, this is a must try.

Manhattan Seafood Platter @ $29.90: I always like to order platter as it would have consist of everything that you must try in the restaurant. This platter consists of their fish fillet, oyster, prawns, calamari, fries and garlic rice. Before they placed the pan on the table, the staff attempted to do a stunt, by torching the prawns (to make if flaming) before your very eyes. BY doing so, it will sort of melt the sauce on the prawn and burnt the rest of the seafood around the prawns as well. Personally, this step can be removed as it does more harm to the platter, especially the food, then to get me impressed. After that stunt, there is a burnt smell. Now I understand why there is a burnt smell in the restaurant as they kept doing the torching again and again.

Back to the platter, everything in front of me was fried. Very sinful! The prawns tasted very sweet, too sweet to be its original flavor, even my partner also agrees with me. Think either they added some artificial sweetener to make it sweet or the sauce on the prawns makes it sweet. It is too sweet for my liking, so much so that I named them the fake prawns. Next the oysters, well after being deep fried; it does not taste like oyster any more. The batter is too thick and it is too oily for my liking. Calamari and the fish tasted usual (complain same as the oyster), nothing to wow about but by then I was really sick of the platter already, reason being of all the deep fried stuff. The only think I quite like it is the rice but it was partial ruined by the flaming prawns during the torching process.

Before this, I ordered a set meal or they called it Perfect Catch @ $4.90 which comes with a drink and a soup. I forgot if the soup is cream of mushroom or clam chowder. All I remember was the soup was a straight out of a can.

Somehow the service was quite good when they automatically topped up my ice water, my tartar sauce without asked for and that did added back some points in their service. However they are back to square one when I asked for the bill and waited for them to return me the bill. It took ages and I nearly missed the show because of it. Sigh…. The bill comes up to $52.60. To me it is totally so not worth it. I don’t think I will go back to this place for seafood ever again.

To me the competition between Fish & Co and Manhattan Fish Market, in terms of the food, Fish & Co won by a comfortable mile (as Simon Cowell would have put it).