Spratts Seafood Restaurant

Press, 30 July 1986, Page 26

Spratts Seafood Restaurant

182 Oxford Terrace Phone 67-817 8.Y.0.

GARY ARTHUR)

Spratts is one of those few Christchurch restaurants lucky enough to have a riverside position, offering customers the added pleasure of a view of the Avon, arguably New Zealand’s most cosseted and manicured river. It is a seafood restaurant, reminiscent of the beachside cafes of Spain and Italy, with its rattan blinds at half-mast, as if to protect from the fierce Mediterranean sun, suspended trellises draped with vines, and such nautical touches as glass fishing floats and framed maps and scenes from Captain Cook’s voyages. Spratts seats about 80, upstairs and down, and offers a most extensive range of seafoods, plus three meat dishes and a vegetarian omelette for those non-fish eaters who might stray in by mistake. In fact, the 19 fish dishes preceded by 10 cold fish appetisers, a seafood chowder, and eight hot fish entrees, might really be overdoing it a bit. Better perhaps to reduce the list, even by as much as half, and to put more style and imagination into those that remain — a select menu of high quality, rather than a huge selection which probably does not allow the chef the opportunity to show his prowess.

We have eaten there seven times now, between

us, over an extended period, and both felt that here was a restaurant of tremendous unrealised potential. There were just little disappointments this time, but they added up. We started with appetisers of smoked eel ($6.50) and smoked blue-fin tuna ($8). In each case the fish was excellent, but the menu promised rye bread and horseradish cream with both appetisers, and they failed to materialise.

Actually, we had wanted to start with Tasman Bay crab — whole paddlecrab with lemon butter — and then go on to Canterbury crayfish in one case, and garlic prawns in the other. The prawns were prompted by the sight of a very fetching print of huge red prawns on the restaurant’s far wall. But these, the crayfish and the paddlecrabs, were all unavailable. Fair enough, but please tell us next time before we have spent time on the menu, getting our salivary glands excited for nothing.

I went for another seasonal delicacy — whitebait in an omelette ($8.50) — and although the omelette was fine as omelettes go, it was a mistake on my part. Whitebait’s delicate flavour does not survive the journey through the omelette pan. My mother’s fritters are still the best way. Crepe Atlantis ($6.20), the other chosen entree,

was a generous parcel of shrimps, scallops, mussels, cod, and chopped crabstick which was pronounced delicious — with the slight quibbles that the dish was a bit cold and the crepe appeared not to have been cooked on its outer side. We both looked to the section entitled “Spratts Choice” for our main dishes. Denied the garlic prawns, I chose the “fresh catch of the day” ($13.50), which proved to be warehou, a fish that was new to me. It could be grilled, panfried or poached, and served either plain or with orange and almond, mornay, or lemon-parsley sauce. Being advised that it was a slightly oily fish, I left it to the chef to decide between grilling or pan-frying. He chose to pan-fry the warehou, and the result was very satisfying — firm flesh, not oily, and nicely browned. Neptune’s Delight ($17.50) was the other choice — grilled orange roughy topped with panfried scallops, ginger, mushrooms, spring onions and tomatoes, and garnished with crumbed calamari rings. It too proved a very satisfactory choice, although the ginger was declared to be undetectable. Our disappointment with the main courses was in the vegetables. We were served brussels

f sprouts and carrots, i, neither vegetable very ap- - petising (the carrots were - pale and hard) and i neither of them very suitt able for our fish dishes, i Broccoli, available in i abundance at the market, 1 would have been much more acceptable. We had 5 a choice of French fries s or roast potatoes. i From the list of eight : desserts, including a i cheese platter, we chose ’ spiced apple crepe ($5) > and marinated fruit and t brandy snaps ($5.50). It was canned apple in the - crepe, and canned 1 peaches in the brandy r snaps, with no trace of the , brandy in which they r were said to have been t marinated. 1 To some of us with ) certain weaknesses, the r puddings are the clincher > to any meal, and it would 1 be nice to see Spratts elevate theirs to a more t important place in the order of things. t We brought along a • bottle of Villa Maria Chari donnay which proved a ■ good accompaniment to , the fish dishes. Spratts > does not charge corkage. Our waitress was very I pleasant and gave us good » service, and the restau- ’ rant is an enjoyable seti ting for a cafe-style meal, s It was not cheap, however — $74.20 for the two of us t — and our over-all im- > pression was that there i was room for little im- ! provements.