2 Fish Restaurant - 7/20 Wharf St, Port Douglas. Ph: 07 4099 6350

2 Fish Restaurant is renowned for seafood dining. We are fortunate that the Coral Sea provides such wonderful bounty. However, we are even luckier to have 2 Fish Restaurant in Port Douglas.

Some restaurants do good fish; others take seafood to another level. 2 Fish sits in the latter category. With his Asian/French influenced ocean fare, head chef Andy Gray takes your taste buds on a voyage of flavor and texture. This may sound a little hi falutin’ but, as ever, the proof is on the plate.

The Boss and I turned up for a long lunch to be greeted by two sumptuous starters. The Thai style prawn salad with toasted macadamias is a wonderfully zesty creation. Its companion, the silky Moreton Bay bug ravioli with avruga roe is addictive and delicate. This is everything you want from fine fare: complex, brilliantly combined tastes, lovely aesthetics and a ‘feel’ that has you melting.

Recently added to the menu is the fetta and pistachio encrusted wild barramundi with a warm eggplant salad. Here the softness of the fish is offset expertly by the luscious eggplant. A subtle but uplifting red wine vinegar emulsion adds excellent finish. There is barra … and then there are dishes like this.

As if that wasn’t enough, the red emperor with Asian veg and crispy noodles and a chilli/ginger glaze took us even higher. The ‘meatier’ flesh sat well with the fresh veg, and the glaze wrapped it up with a subtle but detectable heat, leaving a lovely afterglow.

All the while, we were getting into 2 Fish’s craftily crafted wine list. Whites are the go, of course, and we went trans-Tasman with the easy drinking mellowness of a Wither Hills Sav Blanc. (In fact, Marlborough NZ features prominently on the list, as do some superb South Australian reds on the cleverly paired wine list).

Dessert, like the fresh seafood, was an exercise in texture. The deliriously understated lavender panacotta with cinnamon poached pear is not only stylish but way too easy to eat. The mango brulee, (made the old fashioned way on a heavy brulee iron), has a blend of candy style sweetness and tropical fruit zip. Again, the bywords here are lush and delicate.

Chef Andy has refined his menu of late, nudging in a few European influences to complement his spicier Asian themes. The bottom line is that dining at 2 Fish is still very much habit forming.

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