Little Fish
746 South 6th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
I
love walking around the city and looking for those little places that don’t get
all the praise that some of the other restaurants do. They may not have a
celebrity chef, but they have extremely skilled chefs that crank out some
amazing food on a daily basis. I had eyed up a place like this for quite some
time in the Bella Vista area called Little Fish. My girlfriend and I made plans
on a Friday night to head over there during Lent. The place was extremely cool
on the inside. It was very small, and the kitchen was right next to where
people were eating, so you could watch the chef at work. The menu was written
on a blackboard above our heads, and apparently it changes daily. I love
restaurants like this because they keep everything so fresh in the eyes of the
customers.
There
were only a few options of things we could choose that didn’t have any meat in
them. While most of the dishes were fish dishes, a lot of them had a meat
component to them. We ordered up one dish that had a meat component to it, but
asked them to remove it, that being the kampachi served with mangos, cashews,
Thai basil and until our modification, foie gras. Kampachi is a fish very
similar to yellowtail and kingfish. This Kampachi was sliced thin and served
raw amidst a mango reduction, cashews and Thai basil. The taste and flavors
were outstanding. The kampachi was a nice, clean fish that was meaty, but not
overly oily or anything of that nature. Mixing it with the other ingredients
made a whirlwind of flavor. It was delicious.
For
our entrees we ordered the cobia and the seabass. I had never had cobia before,
but the elements of the dish intrigued me. The cobia was grilled and then
served with sunchokes, uni, fennel, shishito peppers and in a dashi broth. The
fish was cooked perfectly, and the grill marks added some nice flavor as well.
All of the elements seemed to have the perfect place in the dish. The sunchokes
added starchiness, the uni a creamy and earthy flavor, the peppers a touch of
freshness, and the dashi broth brought it all together with its depth of
flavor. I enjoyed it all, as evidence by my soon empty plate.
I
had the pleasure of tasting my girlfriend's seabass as well and was just as
impressed by it. The skin was cooked to such a crispy state, that it cracked
like a pane of glass when you touched it with your fork. The fish was extremely
tasty, especially when mixed with the black garlic sauce and the Dungeness
crab. Both entrees were outstanding, and we were extremely looking forward to
dessert.
I
do have to mention that the kitchen was a bit slow. I know that tends to be the
case when it is one or two people cooking in a small kitchen, but I just want
you to be aware of it. The wait time
wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t fast by any means. We waited pretty long to get our
dessert, but when we tasted it we knew exactly how worth the wait it was. We
had ordered a brown butter cake with a mango sauce, banana ice cream and a
brown sugar crumble. I know how good that sounds, but it doesn’t even do it
justice. The taste of this dish was out of this world. The cake was small, but
it was crazy flavorful. You could taste the brown butter throughout each bite.
It wasn’t even that you could taste butter, but you could even taste that it
had been browned first. The cake had an incredible texture to it. It wasn’t
quite crunchy on the outside, but it did have some resistance like a crust. The
banana ice cream was very banana forward, but it didn’t overpower the cake.
Mixing in the bits of brown sugar crumble brought in another element of texture
and sweetness to the dish. We almost ordered another one because it really was
that good.
Three
and a half pints for Little Fish. The food was exquisite, as was the ambiance.
The only drawback for me was the price point. It was a little bit expensive. I
think we wound up paying over a hundred dollars for two people, obviously with no alcohol since it was a BYOB. Other than the
price it really was an amazing dining experience from start to finish. It will
surely satisfy your desires for a wonderful meal, so check it out and let me
know what you think! Cheers!
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