There aren’t that many independent and reasonably-priced seafood restaurants in this city, so it was with no little enthusiasm that we received news that Fish and Co. had made their Dubai début. Singapore’s favourite piscatorial sizzlers have been opening up branches across East Asia with fervour over the past few years and have earned a reputation for providing bright, welcoming restaurants serving high-quality family food.

While the glassy eyes of a grim-faced, wall-affixed plastic trout glared at an enthusiastic child determined to grab our hair, we tackled the laminated menu. From an adventurous range of starters I chose the mussels with lemon and butter, gargantuan molluscs swimming in an extremely tasty (and no doubt arteryclogging) butter sauce which solidified alarmingly as it cooled. My companion plumped for a fresh and fragrant garden salad that was so vast it seemed to comprise an entire vegetable patch.

Mains came served in the restaurant’s trademark frying pans – a slightly cumbersome gimmick as you have to negotiate a rogue handle whilst attempting to eat, but sure to provide much hilarious, if unwanted entertainment. In my pan I had salmon steak with creamy mushroom sauce and chips. Salmon is an oily fish and I had my doubts about the cream, but the light flakes of springy, tender, peachcoloured flesh were perfectly cooked and tasted great with the dark fungal flavour of the sauce. My companion’s fish and chips were a far cry from the grease-saturated newspaper fodder you might expect from a British chippie. Instead, the thin fillet of cod had been sparingly coated with a feather-light batter and simply dressed with a lemon. It was excellent, and the chips were freshly-cut and fried to a delicate crisp.

There was little atmosphere but large screens did show cartoon monsters silently clawing each other to death, a bit of a distraction from conversation. We were able to tear our eyes away from the carnage for long enough to order the highly recommended New York cheesecake and a double chocolate brownie, passable desserts if a bit too sweet and sticky after our fishy feast.

All in all, Fish and Co. is a great little family restaurant, jeopardised slightly by gimmicks and garish cartoons. Let’s hope that things liven up a bit – the food here is too good for the place to be a flash in the pan.