Three Fish

Serious dining with a sense of humor

by Bill Rodriguez

Open Mon-Fri, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Sun-Thurs, 5:30-9:30 p.m.; Fri and Sat, 5:30-10 p.m
Major credit cards
Sidewalk access

If you go to Three Fish in Westerly, be sure to get there early enough to savor the delicious atmosphere that is such a match for the fine food. Skylights and picture windows flood the restaurant with light and invite the eye to linger outside. Lush riverside greenery hugs the building and the Pawcatuck flows attractively -- a narrow stretch that seems compact enough to have been placed there for effect.

As a menu statement explains, the restaurant's name comes from the fact that the Westerly town seal sports three salmon. The area's Indian name was Misquamicut, "place of the salmon."

The bucolic scene outside is echoed inside, with dark-stained pine trim and wainscoting against the raw brick of the renovated mill building. The three-fish motif is unrelenting to the point of being a good-natured joke: in a painting, on a cabinet, with your bill instead of mints, etc. Fortunately, while the blossoms of Sweet William in the pottery vase on our table were purple and pink, they were not salmon pink.

The first thing you'll notice as the food passes by is how much of it is the culinary equivalent of big hair. Someone's mashed potatoes sport a tall, cross-hatched wafer. A filet mignon supports a tower of what look to be complex egg-glazed crackers. And this is all in the sophisticated but entertaining tradition of food-as-modernist-sculpture recently out of vogue in its Manhattan hotbed but, fortunately, surviving in pockets of esthetic excess like Three Fish.

As a result, the restaurant's elaborate wine list, with nearly a dozen champagnes, seems a fitting offering, as are the hot wedges of crusty bread served with your soup course. The Three Fish Chowder with seafood dumplings ($4) is worthy of a signature dish. It's thick with leeks and cubes of potatoes, a tomato-infused oil lending pools of color. You might find it too salty, as I did, but you will certainly find the dumplings scrumptious: filled with a salmon and halibut mousseline as light and fresh as the sea air.

For an appetizer, we had spring rolls ($6), whose sweet-and-sour sauce was proffered aloft on a wrought-iron device. Far below, the three enormous fried veggie wraps were tasty with citrus sauce, although a bit of texture would have been welcome in the over-sautéed filling.

There are eight regular menu items, plus daily specials. And all of them are weighted toward seafood, as you would expect. Thoughtful decisions come across: horseradish in the mashed potatoes accompanying the grilled salmon, but sage flavoring the version with the stronger tasting grilled shrimp.

The halibut ($18) served across the table from me was quite good. Pan-seared to provide a crust and to seal in juices, the thick filet was accompanied by a mix of homefries, scallions, and lobster chunks, under julienned vegetables and a citrus sauce that could have used more of its billed ginger.

My pork tenderloin ($18) was equally tasty. Rubbed with chili and with espresso in the barbecue sauce, the crust on the delicate meat was a robust complement, while a purée of rhubarb and roasted apple was a nice tart condiment beneath the thick slabs. On the side was an interesting patty of shredded potato, fried golden.

And the desserts here are modernist art as well. Constructed as much as concocted, the one we chose is typical of the more elaborate of them. Presumably, it's billed "the Bomb" ($8) because the moist semi-sweet chocolate globe at the center explodes into flavor. No lie.

But the assembly around it looks delightfully like some joker's senior thesis project in architecture. Upended brownie wedge, ribbon of chocolate wafer spanning the bowl rim, fresh raspberries here and there like sentinels. The funniest bit, though, sticks with the bomb motif: atop a dollop of hazelnut ice cream, a tiny candle glows through a thin column of tart fruit leather! (Oh, by the way -- it's all quite delicious, too.)

A fitting end to a fine meal. Three Fish may represent serious dining, but it does keep a sense of humor about it.