‘London Gatwick’ serves us… more fish, this time — Albanian.
Fish House bills itself as a house of fish; in reality, it is a house of suffering. When my friend and I first ambled past Fish House on a sultry Tirana afternoon, we were immediately taken by the promise of fresh fish and cheap, quaffable wine. Later that same day, we arrived at Fish House sweaty but full of hope. The intrigue of the place was only augmented by the visible absence of any staff to tend the jaunty al fresco dining environment. We sauntered gingerly into the restaurant in the hope of locating a waiter, only to be confronted by a gregarious, bespattered handy man. ‘I will tell him’, he cried, as he dropped his mop and ushered us back up the steps. Our curiosity partially sated, we took a seat at the nearest table. After a wait of five minutes, our waiter finally appeared, brandishing two menus. He was a singular figure: in his fifties, by the looks of him; bespectacled, of middling stature, mildly but uncomfortably overweight, with a steely gaze above his finely trimmed grey moustache. Avoiding eye contact or any form of verbal greeting, he grunted contemptuous recognition as he dumped the menus on the table and waddled back down the stairs. A moment later, he reappeared – as if from nowhere – demanding to know our order. Not that he said as much, of course; but the frightening bellicosity with which he held his pen and paper seemed to brook no argument. Regretting our innocent decision, made earlier in the day, to sample the delights of Fish House, my friend and I panicked. He ordered the octopus; I, the hake. Five minutes later, the fish materialised. Had he been any less unapproachable, I would have politely enquired of our waiter whether the fish was, in fact, fresh. But, as if in anticipation of my cogitations, he had retreated to another table, where he stood motionlessly studying the rubble that, in Tirana, passes for pavement. Sensing that my complaint would be poorly received — if it were to be received at all — I turned to examine my plate. There was something singularly threatening about, shall we say, the cut of my hake’s jib. I picked over the grotesque corpses of six small fish, evidently dipped whole into a deep fat fryer earlier in the day and hastily reheated to meet our order. Seasoning was absent; a slice of lemon was the only consolation, though sadly it was not quite acidic enough to dissolve the mass of white bone that lined each fish. I struggled bravely through the meal and even managed a bloody grin at the end of it all, the fish bones having savaged my gums to no end of barbarity. The octopus was little better: rubbery and entombed in a — self-evidently store-bought — tomato sauce. Our fish consumed, we hurried to pay our dues and retire to the nearest meat bar. In one final sally of resentment, our depressive waiter tried to short-change us our 5000-Lek note. But we were quick to assure him that, in this case, our Lek were not intended as a tip; they were intended as a sufferance. I leave an additional star only because the wine was indeed both cheap and quaffable.
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