[Heaton Moor, Stockport] Easy Fish

This was our third visit to Easy Fish. There was a king prawn cocktail to start – actually a sort of deconstructed one with the various ingredients on a plate rather than piled together in a glass in traditional fashion. It’s not an improvement on the traditional. There is lettuce but only a little bit and not enough to give crunch. There’s no Marie Rose sauce and what is a prawn cocktail without Marie Rose? The other starter was better – barbequed octopus. It had been long cooked so that it was meltingly soft and then given a quick blast to give it a charring. Samphire and thinly sliced radish do give crunch and a carrot puree acts as a pleasant , if slightly odd, sauce.

Grilled plaice was a well cooked fillet and samphire worked well with it. However it was let down by a butter sauce that formed something of a lake on the plate. Sea trout was a fish I’d never eaten before. I enjoyed its salmon-esque texture and flavour. And the kitchen had given it a superbly crisp skin. There’s fried mushrooms, tiny new seasons broad beans and samphire – these are good. But there’s another let-down with the “whipped” potato – it has no texture and is almost a sauce. Just not very nice at all.

So, as with the two previous visits, it was OK food. But, as with the two previous visits, the food took ages to come out of the kitchen. You get to the finger tapping stage. And that really does take the shine off the evening. I think we’ve given it enough tries and doubt we’ll be back .

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I’m still looking for a place which serves a prawn cocktail the way I remembered it from the 60s/70s - i.e. a circle of prawns perched around the rim of a tall glass.

Beautifully descriptive writing … I could almost see and taste the meal

A reason to visit NYC :sunglasses:

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Beautiful! :slight_smile:

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We never got those in the Berni Inns in the 70s (my then experience of a “good” restaurant). It was the usual small prawns drenched in Marie Rose and sat on some shredded lettuce. Came in a big glass, of course, where you could play “hunt the prawn”.

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My Danish stepmonster made a mean version of this shrimp cocktail … to this day it’s my favorite shrimp prep.

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Fond memories:

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Thank you for the links
We make it with ketchup, mayo, celery salt, worstishire, sherry, cayenne and lemon sometimes chili sauce.
I also love crab Louis with its similar sauce it’s also considered old fashioned and rarely seen on the east coast. Still popular on the west coast.

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Speak of the little devil - was at Daniel Boulud’s DB Bistro at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore this evening when I saw Prawn Cocktail listed as one of the appetisers on their menu. Just had to order it and look what I got - voila! :joy:

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:joy::joy::joy:

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