Lunching at the Fish Market is hectic. The outdoor tables are usually packed with visitors and even when you do find a table, you’ll be stalked by hungry seagulls and ibises hoping to raid your goodies. Have you considered avoiding all the hassle and dining upstairs at the Chinese restaurant instead? It’s a relative shangri-la of calm up there: big blue aquariums of live seafood, and sunlight shining through windows offering views of the fishing boats of Blackwattle Bay.
Scallops and prawns that have come off those boats are packaged up into dumplings. They also do a tasty chicken dumpling, and an excellent veggo one packed with crunchy mushrooms, and the thin-sliced barbecue pork is a compelling argument for looking beyond the steamers.
They keep a more leisurely pace here – you may have to wait to lock down everything on your hit list, including a plate of forest green Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce to mitigate all that dumpling action. The attitude here is cheekily hard-sell: when Time Out refuses a plate of salt and pepper calamari, a roguish trolley-pusher sneaks a piece onto our plate in the hope we’ll change our mind on her return trip. All the while, we’re kept topped up with pots of scalding hot tea.
