Restaurant review: The Blue Marlin, Camperdown Street, Dundee

By RICHARD BATH
Published on Sunday 29 January 2012 12:00

DUNDEE, long the butt of jokes about being twinned with Beirut, is changing.

The arrival of a £45 million offshoot of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which will open in 2014, has been the catalyst for an unprecedented spurt of inner-city rejuvenation on Tayside that is sucking money and commerce into the city.

The centrepiece of the revitalised waterfront area will inevitably be the remarkably futuristic chrome-plated V&A building, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, which will hug the waterline of Craig Harbour, overlooking the silvery Tay. But there is already a good deal of regeneration going on, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the row of shiny new shops and restaurants lining City Quay, looking across to that wooden relic of Dundee’s glorious past, HMS Unicorn.

We thought at first this was where we would find Dundee’s newest fish restaurant, the Blue Marlin, and while San Francisco-style al fresco eating wasn’t really uppermost in our minds on a chilly January weekend, the idea of sitting windowside and looking out on to water still held a lot of appeal. Disappointingly, the restaurant isn’t actually on the quay but just a few yards away, on the main road – handier for the office workers who will ensure a steady turnover at lunchtime, but undeniably less picturesque.

Still, you can park right outside, and the interior of the place is certainly pretty appealing. So shiny and new that you could almost smell the paint on the tongue and groove panels that line the walls and the bar, the decor doesn’t exactly exude comfort but is undeniably fresh, light and airy, as you would hope for in a fish restaurant. The owners, chef Steve Hyatt and his wife Alison, moved here four months ago from the small Angus town of Monifieth and describe their new venue as having a “hint of a Cape Cod harbour” restaurant – and that’s a pretty fair description.

Finding out the restaurant wasn’t on the waterfront was only the first little surprise of our visit. The number of options wasn’t the only thing on the menu that was huge – if you strayed from the excellently priced lunch menu, the prices were absolutely brutal. With the cheapest starter (soup of the day) costing £6.50, the cheapest non-vegetarian main course (salmon fillet) costing £18.50 and the puddings weighing in at £6.95, by the time you’d had two meals with coffee, a bottle of house wine and service, the chances of keeping the bill anywhere near £100 are slim to none. If pointing this out seems a little harsh when seafood is so expensive these days, it’s nevertheless surely true that if a meal costs more than £100 you would expect it to be something pretty special.

Our efforts to locate a special meal actually began quite well. John started with the soup of the day, which turned out to be a lovely haddock chowder that was stuffed full of fish and had a nicely understated flavour. Steve Hyatt has travelled the world, and along the has clearly picked up a few tricks because this was a more than competent version of the sort of staple dish that defines a seafood restaurant. Nor were there any complaints from me about my tiger prawn tails poached in garlic olive oil and served with French bread.

Our main courses followed the same pattern, with John enthusing over his while I was fairly neutral about mine. John had asked for a main-sized portion of the crab cakes from the starter menu, and it worked well. Packed with crab and served with a chilli, coriander and tomato salsa, his verdict was, “Superb.”

By now I was feeling like a relentless curmudgeon as I prodded the ‘Thai-style’ noodles that surrounded the pan-fried sesame-crusted catfish fillet in my bowl. The dressing was supposed to comprise honey, soy, wasabi and citrus but it seemed to be predominantly soy, with no wasabi in sight, and rather overpowering. Set against that, however, was the fact that the gleaming white flesh of the catfish was cooked to moist perfection: a real curate’s egg of a dish.

It’s something of a truism down the years that when it comes to the end of the meal, seafood restaurants vie with vegetarian restaurants for the right to produce the worst puddings (although they both lag a country mile behind Indian restaurants). The Blue Marlin looked as if it might buck the trend with what appeared to be an inviting selection of desserts,. But it more than conformed to type with a cloyingly messy marmalade bread and butter pudding. John’s chocolate and vanilla ice-cream was fine, but you would expect it to be at £5.50.

It’s a sad fact of life that the city’s gain is often the provincial town’s loss. For many years, the Blue Marlin was a popular venue – in fact one of the only venues – in Monifieth. However, with its trade declining, bored kids in the main square annoying customers and the bright lights of Dundee twinkling on the horizon, it came as little surprise when the Hyatts upped sticks. Unfortunately, in formerly well-kempt little towns the length and breadth of the country, the same process seems to be repeating itself. And in this case, despite the hefty cost of eating at the Blue Marlin, Dundee’s gain is still Monifieth’s loss.

The Blue Marlin 6b Camperdown Street, Dundee (01382 534001, www.thebluemarlin.co.uk)

Bill please

Lunch £9.95-£13.95 (two/three courses) Early bird menu £11/£14.50/£17.95 (one/two/three courses)

Starters £6.50-£14.50 Main courses £16.50-£39 Puddings £5.50 -£6.95 Cheese £6.95 Rating

7/10

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