(from the blog: http://thehedonista.com/fishy-fishy-barracuda-and-other-market-restaurants/)
...At the back, are a crew of eager orderers. They are checking the daily catch. The noise back there is like at a market stall - all languages are spoken, tumbling ice, slapping fish flesh, clattering steel plates on age-browned scales, there's even a little jostling and raised voices. I take my lead from them and attend the fray.
Bouri (also known as biah, wagena or grey mullet) feature prominently - they're the cheapest, and popular, with their firm white flesh and fat little bodies. Their faces are shaped like the end of a shoe, with sad cloudy eyes falling off the sides of them - they're not for me. There's plump spotted hamour (orange spotted grouper), the tastiest and most tragically overfished. They'll be popular, but they're large, and not cheap - family celebrations will fit the bill. The two-bar sea bream (faskar) with golden wings are the sustainable choice, and taste much like my favourite fish but they're a little on the small side today. So I'll go with my old favourite, the snapper (hamra) - shiny, clear-eyed, and large enough for four. Next time I'll try the pink-eared emperor - they were just a little too large. Then there's some squeaky clean local sole or Samak Moussa, glaring at me cockeyed like a Picasso portrait. Yes, funny lady, with your sweet tender flesh, you're mine. There's Omani lobster, shiny, coloured and coated like an enamel broach, delicate manna crabs, blue-fingered and painted with shadows of sunlight through seaweed. And prawns of course - both monstrous and middling.
barracuda-fishmongerMy fishmonger smiles and nods - he approves my choice. They're weighed and slapped onto a plate with no apparent marking, which is taken to the kitchen tout suite. With the cacophony that surrounds, I'm not sure I'll ever see them again. I order rice, a prawn tagine and some cuttlefish to go with, and return to my seat.
The family are already well entrenched. They've attacked the trolly dolly, a lady with salads, sides and starters, who is walking around yum-cha style. The kids are on their second packet of pita already, and the others are tucking into a subliminally good eggplant dish - it's roasted and marinated in tomato and who knows what else - it's gorgeous. It might be the 'mesakaa', or simply the 'eggplant' listed on the menu, but who needs to know - we just take another bowl as Dolly passes by again. We gorge on other things - a lovely roca salad, a fair fattoush, silky garlic dip, and then the cuttlefish arrives. Goldilocks (6 year old son) eats most of it before Lion (9 year old) discovers it's not scary and he likes it. A fight breaks out over the last piece.
Within half an hour, the place is crammed. People are sharing tables and even every outside seat is taken, despite the 37 degree day. The crowd is the most diverse I have seen in a restaurant in Dubai. Aussies, French, Sri Lankans, Lebanese, Spanish, Japanese, Pakistani, and more nationalities fill the tables. It seems everyone is in on the secret that has taken me three years to discover. The sole arrives, skin removed, battered and deep-fried whole. It's crisp, not the slightest bit oily, perfectly seasoned. It's scraped to the bone, flipped, cleared again and then gone - faster than the cuttlefish.
Then the pièce de resistance - the Snapper Singary. We've ordered it cooked in an Egyptian method, where the fish is opened from the back, as it is for Iraqi Masqouf. Then it's covered with spices and softened onions, parsley and garlic, and garnished with sliced tomato. It's then oven baked quickly on a high heat. It's incredible. I think it might almost be better than Masqouf. It's soft, incredibly juicy, delicate, and so easy to eat without the spine running through the centre. The kids take slabs and roll it in pita, while I add slices of pickled green chilli to my mouthfuls. My husband quietly moans with pleasure in the corner.
The prawn tagine gets lost. We wait, not caring, knowing that we are too full to fit another thing in. The kids order deserts - ornate and special ice creams of a laminated sheet that reminds me of the tartufo menus in old fashioned Melbourne pizza restaurants. Lion's lemon sorbet arrives in a lemon, smoking cold. We're just about to ask for the bill when the tagine comes. We groan a little, then shift our bellies back under our belts and tentitively tuck in. It's good, very good. And we just cant' stop. The prawns are small and sweet - not particularly amazing, but good enough. The secret is in the sauce - onions softened almost to the point of french onion soup, and flavoured with garlic and dill. We ditch the cutlery and use our bread as spoons, sopping up every last bit.
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