Herald rating: * * * * 1/2
Address: 170 Jervois Road, Herne Bay
Ph: (09) 376 5367
Website: frankiesfishhouse.co.nz
Open: Tuesday-Sunday from 5.30
Wine list: Short, sweet, cheap. BYO corkage, $5 a drinker
Vegetarians: Several choices
Watch out for: Bones
Bottom line: Generous helpings, good food, great prices
"You won't be keeping the prices like this, I guess," I said to the bloke in charge as he swiped my credit card.
"Yep," he said. "We've budgeted on getting $43 from each diner to break even."
I glanced guiltily at the receipt, which recorded our group's failure,
by more than $4.50, to pull our weight, and resolved that I would go back with a bunch of hungry friends - soon, before word gets out and you can't get in the door.
Because Frankie's deserves to do a lot better than break even. I'm picking that it will become the hottest table in town this summer, and for good reason.
In these dark days, eating out ain't what it used to be: this food is no-frills and fresh, comes in generous helpings and is almost as cheap as chips (which, perversely, do not appear on its menu).
Frankie's is the creation of Michael Devereux, who for the past four years has owned the reliable Red (it occupies the same premises and, at the time of writing, the bill still had "Red" at the top).
As the name suggests, the incarnation is predominantly a fish restaurant, although half the starters and a couple of mains are made with vegetarians or non-fish-eaters in mind. The decor is as spare as the wine "list" - 10 choices, all by the glass at $9 or less.
And the service is relaxed - even to a fault; the sight of the host sitting on the edge of the next table as he discusses the order is jarring. But that's the last complaint you'll get from me today.
The starter plates, all priced at $6.70, are small only by comparison with what is to follow, but they dwarf some of the morsels that are served around town as tapas. I enjoyed a plate of tender and juicy squid doused with a piquant lime dressing; the Blonde was most impressed with a serving of grilled eggplant glazed with honey and chilli; the impecunious student insisted she had had better Thai-style fishcakes elsewhere, and maintained that position even when I explained the meaning of the expression "looking a gift horse in the mouth", so I have to take her at her word.
They don't do fish and chips here. In fact, they don't do fish the way you may be used to it, neatly filleted and tricked out and drizzled with dressing and costing the thick end of $30. Frankie's house specialty is whole fish which, as Devereux explains, minimises preparation time and means he can deliver to the table more than 200g to each diner for $17 a head (for tarakihi; a bit more for snapper, a bit less for gurnard). You have to be prepared to do a bit of dissection - which is in New Zealanders' genes, it seems to me, and it's fun anyway - but our plate, with jasmine rice and bok choy, made a great meal for two for less than $34.
You can also get claypot meals - seafood stew, Thai green curry fish or gumbo - and they're running a swap-a-claypot system like the tiffin lunches at Monsoon Poon, which means you can pick up takeaway food as good as the eat-in variety. But my advice is to eat in. Often. I will.
