LDNReview
photo credit: Paul Winch-Furness
Sexy Fish
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If This Restaurant Was A Person is a fun game isn’t it? Never played? Here are some examples:
Roganic, a tasty but occasionally tedious fine dining place in Marylebone, is the person who insists on audio tours at an exhibition. Because. You. Must. Have. Context.
P. Franco, the lovely wine bar in Clapton, is the kind of person who would snooze their alarm one time too many, then get up to find they spilled Beaujolais on their Reebok Classics the night before.
We like both of these restaurants. If they were people, we’d definitely hang out. Which brings us, seamlessly, to Sexy Fish. If this Asian fusion Mayfair restaurant was a person, it would be a big, over the top, naff one. Who regularly ensures they haven’t got any pubic hair. Sexy Fish has a beluga scented car-freshener. It shouts into its bluetooth headset walking down the street. It looks at the £28.30 wagyu gyoza and says “we’ll have three of them”.
Though Sexy Fish feels like it’s been made by, and for, these types of people, and the food is mostly overpriced and underwhelming, it is, undeniably, fun. It’s also funny. The restaurant itself - a Star Wars cantina brought to you by the producers of Love Island - is all noise, gold, flesh, and Damien Hirst gyrating mermaid art. If there’s one man who knows overpriced tat, it’s him. The scene here is tasteless hilarity, and it’s a similar story with the food. Things like the soft-shell crab or signature duck and watermelon salad are average tasting, but over-averagely priced. And even though the two Isle of Mull scallops are pretty nice, it’s hard to get past the £16 price tag. In fact, it’s impossible to get past it.
You wouldn’t come to Sexy Fish to spend your own money. Unless you have lots of it, and a warped interest in wasting it. This is a place to be taken to, once. To laugh at when the DJ comes out, but to leave soon afterwards, because eating crab and bone marrow covered in a cement-like truffle sauce, listening to ’Beefa style house, is only fun for so long. We’re just not that type of person.