Accompany your meal with a bottle of Lord's wine and receive a free starter.
This offer is available from Wed Apr 23, subject to availability as displayed in the booking interface. Offer includes taxes and excludes service charge.
Offer valid until May 31
Surf Platter £15.95
125g Fried Calamari, 120g chef's choice of grilled fish and 4 grilled prawns, served with Szechuan and a tartare sauce. Including VAT and excluding service charge.
Offer valid until May 31
CTFM tries to create a broad appeal to many kinds of visitors in this tourist trap part of London. There's a sushi conveyor-belt and a fish restaurant menu. There's a wet fish counter near the entrance (no takers on our visit), but also lighting that suggests a bar or nightclub. The overall effect of this and various tacky details - the fisherman mannequin in a sou'wester, the Phil Collins muzak - create a chain-like, formula feel that wouldn't be out of place in a shopping mall. This impression is reinforced by the menu, which is dumbed-down to the lowest common denominators of seafood dishes: 'surf and turf' and chicken burger sit alongside the sushi and salads.
In its favour, CTFM does a couple of things very well: the South African wine list is well chosen, and the seafood we tried was fresh and of tip-top quality. The sushi platter was more than decent, but a small piece of sea bass was cheekily priced at £19.95. Prices throughout the menu are on the high side for a lower-middle-range restaurant of this type.
Given the name and provenance - this is a branch of a South African chain - we had hoped for at least some South African seafood on the menu, but there was none. One of the few, token South African dishes was a seafood stew, served in a potjie (pronounced 'poykee''; it's a cast-iron pot). The stew was based around an overpowering tomato sauce that closely resembled tinned tomato soup. We didn't stay for dessert.
A note on our menu invited diners to enquire about international franchising. What CTFM doesn't seem to understand is that discerning diners want to eat in a restaurant with character and soul, not in someone else's business plan.
Guy Dimond
Time Out issue 1938: October 10-16 2007
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Latest user reviews
This place is awful and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
As a South African I came here for lunch recently to support another well-established brand that has made the jump from my home country to the UK. But unlike Nandos, which is great, Cape Town Fish Market is a disaster.
The food... [More]
Anonymous Mar 3 2008
