Somethin’s Fishy
213 Augusta Avenue
416-260-7493
Dinner for two, with all taxes and tip: $25

It’s okay for a new restaurant to run out of items. When they first open they’re hemorrhaging money. To the consumer, a new stop for noshing has just opened. For the small business owner, a brutal period of negotiation, money borrowing, and DIY renovation (all of which has taken 2 or 3 times longer than expected) is at an end. And their lifetime of servitude is just beginning. So once they flip the open sign it’s a good idea not to overstock perishable items that they don’t yet have the clientèle to maintain.

Even without the seafood, deep fryer oil will begin to smell fishy after about five pounds of potatoes pass through it at 350 degrees. With the halibut, salmon, cod, haddock, tilapia and shrimp wafting out the door of Somethin’s Fishy, Augusta Avenue begins to hype the chip shop’s name. Why not? The four Portuguese fishmongers on Baldwin already have half the block locked down on some coastal odour.

When we roll into the little box in the middle of Kensington market they’ve been open a week. The owner tells us that there’s only Halibut ($11) left. That’s not going to be a problem. What were we going to order, the veal? It’s a chippie shop.

Rather than a giant sphere of dough and air with an aquatic centre, the fish we get looks deceptively small. Until we realize that only a thin coating of deep fried batter separates us from a solid, 6 once portion of moist, flaky halibut. It rests on top of a generous pile of thin, peppery fries.

Tartar sauce bears the homemade marks of coarsely chopped eggs, but multi-hued coleslaw could use a little more vinegar. Though I’m a bit of a vinegar head. At summer camp I agreed to drink a glass of vinegar if my friend would drink the same amount of ketchup. I think that distills the essence of fish & chips vs. hamburgers. Fish and chips are just such a ripe opportunity to go nuts with vinegar.

Though quaint, the practice of wrapping fish in newspaper is disgusting. Who really wants inky newsprint rubbing up against a meal already bringing us one step closer to coronary heart disease? Somethin’s Fishy eschews this tradition in favour of cute, checkered, recyclable cardboard containers

I don’t know how the English eat a deep fried piece of fish and still polish off the fries. But it’s more than I can bear. I’m halfway through writing a “student pizza slice guide” and my midsection has formed into a thin outer shell encasing a large ball of undigested dough. So I douse the coleslaw in vinegar and call it a salad.