After the success of The Beef Club and its basement cocktail bar, the (hyped) owners have just opened The Fish Club next door, once again with décor and graphic design by the much in demand Dorothée Meilichzon.

The restaurant has only been open for two months, and getting a table turned out to be difficult and complicated – they ask that you call at 4pm, but if that doesn’t work, you can send an e-mail. The reply to ours was that the only table available was at 10.30pm (which we said yes to)!

So, is it extra yummy or just overrated? Read on…

Fifties New York goes mad in a wallpaper factory – that’s how you could describe the interior design of The Fish Club. Graphic tiles, fabrics and wallpaper is everywhere. The ceiling has the old pulley system attesting to the place’s former life (a long time ago) as a butcher’s shop at the Les Halle market.

The lighting is also retro, and moody, which made taking photos really complicated, but the overall effect is really pleasing – it’s like a big salon, with low tables and quite a few stools. Be prepared if you have a bad back.

We arrived at 10.15pm for our 10.30pm table in the hope that it would be free already. No such luck. The restaurant was packed to the gills (!) and no-one looked in a hurry to leave. At this point, despite being starving already, we didn’t know that we weren’t going to eat anything for over another hour…The only space available was at the bar, so we perused the menu and ordered a couple of cocktails, made with incredible care. They turned out to be great too!

Most of the menu is fish, obviously, but there’s one meat dish and a distinctly Peruvian influence, with lots of raw and marintated dishes.Over half an hour later, at nearly 11pm, we still hadn’t managed to get our table. None of the staff seemed particularly worried about the situation, and none of the customers were being asked to free their table. Rather annoying.Just before 11pm (!) our table finally became free. If you are used to eating at 7pm, be warned! We had had more than enough time to choose what we wanted, much of which sounded delicious, however the waiter gave us a whole list of dishes that they had run out of – not one or tow, but five or six. After having waited so long, it was a real disappointment.

When the waiter came to tak the order, another one of the dishes was no longer available. Everything is fresh, OK, but shouldn’t they make sure they can serve what they advertise?

We ordered from the reduced choice of dishes, and asked that everything be served at once – the hunger was really getting to us by this time.

The food was finally served around 11.20pm, and turned out to be fairly small tapas-style portions. If you like hearty meals, you’re going to have to order several dishes. Here’s what we had…

Classic Tiradito: Raw fish (ours was tuna) with leche de tigre, a sort of citrusy marinade served with a few vegetables. It was all very fresh and tangy, but the fish itself was a little dull.Nikkei Tiradito: a variation of the above with crushed herbs and a penzu sauce. Once again, lots of citrus tang, nice texture to the fish, but not really a taste sensation.Cod ‘accras’ – a classic, competently executed.The ‘Fish’ salad, with avacado, fennel and other vegetables, served with a very pungent vinaigrette. Super fresh and tasty.Mushrooms stuffed with king prawns. Excellent, even if the taste of the prawns is a little drowned in the rest.Skewered octopus and chorizo – smelled lovely (thanks to the chorizo) with the octopus perfectly cooked. Excellent.Papas à la Huancaïna – fried potatoes served with a sort of cheese. Very, very good indeed!And the Tamales? Amazing! Fried polenta served in a creamy corn sauce with grilled baby sweetcorn. This dish alone would convince us come back to The Fish Club  🙂 What a shame we decided to share it between us. Drat!The mixed ceviche is raw fish in a marinade, and much like the tuna dishes, it was really tough finding something interesting in the taste, as the marinade overpowered it all.

By now, the restaurant had calmed down a little (it was pretty noisy when we arrived), our hunger had dissipated, and we were ready for dessert. The Fish Club’s dessert menu contains… two desserts. The waiter gleefully told us that one of them was sold out. How can that happen is you only have two desserts on the menu?

Anyway, luckily the tapioca, coconut and fruit dessert that was left was absolutely scrumptious – really refreshing.So would we go back? Personally, I’m not a fan of eating dinner at midnight, and in my opinion if you book a table for 10.30pm it should be ready at 10.30pm-ish, not 11pm. The Fish Club may be a victim of its success for the moment, but although some of the dishes are ordinary (and not particularly cheap), others were really delicious.

So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment, wait a few months, get a table for the first sitting and go back to see if things have improved. Until then arm yourself with patience!

The Fish Club (here) is open every day except Sundays and Mondays from 6pm-2am

Tel. +33 (0)1 40 26 68 75

Official site: www.eccfishclub.com

Facebook page: here

To book : call around 4pm or send an e-mail to reservation@eccfishclub.com

To check out all our photos of The Fish Club, click the play button below, then click the four little arrows bottom right to go into fullscreen mode.