When it comes to seafood, it’s got to be fresh. Fish Tales, to our delight, is a Western seafood joint related to the popular Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro. We eagerly started with fried white bait with roasted sweet bell peppers, eggs and sautèed spinach with golden raisins—which turned out to be an omelet. Unfortunately, this dish had too many ingredients that drowned the delicate taste of the white bait. Our second starter was garlic soufflé and escargot, which was sautèed with shallots, garlic, baby spinach and wild mushrooms in a light cream sauce. If you like the taste of shallots and garlic, this sauce will satisfy you, but the escargots disappeared under the mushrooms and spinach. For the main course, we had good old-fashioned fish and chips. It was brilliant. The fish was barramundi from Australia, very fresh with a light crispy batter. Next was pan-fried Idaho rainbow trout. The fish was whole, de-boned and lined with artichokes, kalamanta olives, sun-dried tomatoes and caper flowers—a thumbs-up combination. Our third main course was prawn aglio olio with crabmeat. The pasta was al dente, and we were able to discern the subtle taste of crab and prawn in the flavorful sauce. For dessert, we had a dome of dark bitter chocolate mousse stuffed with wild berries jelly and Grand Marnier sauce. It was fabulous—the dark chocolate was of excellent quality, the mousse was silky and the berries complemented the chocolate well. The rather complex dessert of red wine pear compote on pistachio cake, mascarpone cream lemon sorbet and wine reduction was a winner too. The pear was full flavored, and mascarpone cream gave a smooth twist to the icy sorbet. Overall, the desserts were delicate and balanced without being saccharine. Fish Tales tries hard to be overly creative with its menu, and succeeds only with its desserts. With seafood, we would prefer it if the restaurant stuck to simple, uncluttered dishes.
