A very special kettle of fish

This review was first published in May 2002

Chiswick is a sort of microcosmic London version of Cape Town: it offers the seductive illusions of prosperity and security. It may be next to Shepherd's Bush, but the cultural gulf between these two neighbours is remarkable.

Da Bush is the sort of place where you might get a shoot-out in the local Nando's; Chiswick is the kind of place where you might get a conversation about shooting parties in Scotland over dinner at a restaurant like Fish Hoek.

Fish Hoek is a charming, smallish room in one of those fashionable shades of white: a bit of tongue-and-groove wainscoting, some charming Hemingway-style black-and-white photographs of big game fishing, and a lot of affluent middle-class people talking about the relative merits of Barbados and Mustique.

My first course was Mauritian striped marlin with asparagus and new potato salad; the game fish had the pleasing muscular consistency commensurate with having battled for hours with the rod and reel - or so I fancied. My wife, having been told that langoustines were off, was served a dish that revelled in the name Mozambique Gang Bang - prawns with rice and garlic butter. These prawns were tiger giants and, to be honest, had we been told that they were langoustines we probably would have been duped.

Although tempted by the barracuda, it was the musselcracker that caught and held my attention: a dense white fish with a crazy name that made it sound like an all-in wrestler, served with a blob of what was billed as spicy avocado and transpired to be guacamole. It was nice enough, but not as good as the starter - ditto the sea bass. Not that there's any real difference between starters and mains - the menu gives the option of eating either a half or full portion of each dish.

Puddings were a riot - grown-up ice-cream-parlour stuff: roast bananas with cracked black pepper ice cream; roasted cape nectarines with not just any old vanilla ice cream, but Madagascan vanilla. I sense a new gastrotrend in regionally specific ice creams. And after a cup of Rooibos tea, something that was sold as an immune-boosting, all-round panacea of a hot beverage, it was but a short taxi ride from Chiswick to the gun battles and other diversions of life in Da Bush.

Restaurant Michael Nadra
Elliott Road, London, W4 1PE