Review: Rockfish, Brixham

There are more than a dozen Rockfish restaurants along the Devon and Dorset coast, a successful little chain by anyone’s standard, and the one at Brixham in Devon was the first and is the place where most of their fish are landed.

The dining room does have a bit of a chain vibe, anonymous rows of identical tables and pre-printed everything, but it’s warm enough to get a table on the outside terrace then you’ve got a lovely ringside seat to Brixham’s fishing harbour and can gaze out to sea, watching as the brave boats chug away when twilight beckons to go and catch tomorrow’s menu. The fish on offer in the restaurant very much change with the season, and they make this clear by having the team run through what’s on and what’s not to each table, circling the fish and scribbling the market price on your table with a marker pen. It’s a good touch. But how’s the food?

We both pick some crispy fried cuttlefish to begin, done just as you’d have crispy squid in a Chinese restaurant; fried in the lightest possible batter and having a good bite but not chewy, well seasoned and with a bit of sweet chilli sauce to dip in. Nice enough. Maureen goes with a skate wing in caper butter for main, and it’s an absolute monster. Beautifully cooked with an even brown crust to the skin and tons of juicy meat beneath. I’ve gone for Dover sole and this is also a fine, large fish, big for one person, and dressed very simply in loads of browned butter. The fish is also perfectly cooked, and a whole Dover sole in nut-brown butter is always a treat. The fish comes with bottomless chips, decent specimens with some crispness to them, and we also order a side of samphire. I think this has been fried in butter, which served to over-amp the saltiness but also add an interesting nutty-burnt tang to the veg.

We finish up with a perfectly decent creme brulee. Rockfish is at heart a trad seafood restaurant, cooking all its spankingly fresh seafood very well indeed and not trying to dazzle with flavour pairings or pretty plating. This is probably sensible, it has an awful lot of tourists to feed (one hopes). Three courses is probably around £45 and given the generosity of seafood I think this is a decent price.