The Daily Catch

Closed ... just like their predecessors. Kania Tiko believes there is a curse on the building: every business operating from this location seems to go under.

After being distinctly unimpressed with The Daily Catch in the first instance, many people suggested that they've pulled up their socks, are back in the game, and didn't deserve the panning they got in the first review.

So here we are again.

The concept remains the same: you pick the fish and they fry it up on the spot with a parcel of chips. The fish options range from $5 to $10. Mussels and other extras sometimes show up as well.


The serves are generous: 3 or 4 pieces of fish and slightly more chips than one person wants to eat. The fish in batter is good. The chips are soggy. A lemon wedge was included with each serve, but no tomato sauce: you can buy that separately. There were no chillies included in the serve or on offer at the counter.

Each meal was dropped into a white paper bag (no cardboard tray) that was soon damp, translucent from the oil, and broke open. Given that every other serious fish and chip shop in town has a takeaway box (which works well), there's no reason to disadvantage your customers with poor packaging.

Coke and Pepsi fridges in the shop offer the usual range of canned acid to wash down the oily remnants of your lunch.

On the day I visited there were several other things that stood out, none of them particularly worrying by themselves, but adding up to a negative impression.

The display fridge had condensation problems preventing a good viewing of the fish on offer. Understandable when you have a display fridge in a non-air-conditioned environment, but still annoying and unsightly.

The fryer vent hood was not working that day, so they had a desk fan blowing across the top of the fryers ... ensuring each new visitor to the shop got hit with the smell of hot oil as they came through the door.

Whilst I don't approve of aquariums in fish and chip shops (it seems rude to stare at the little fellows while you wait for their bigger cousins to get fried up for lunch) they don't bother me ... but this fish tank featured a couple of tough little fellows swimming in water that was vomit green.

Add to that the blaring serenade of a Christian radio station being piped into a room with bare concrete walls ... and I don't ever want to go back.

No matter what your opinion of The Daily Catch, you can't help but miss the old Cakaudrove Fish.

In Summary

The Daily Catch

11 Bureta St, Samabula

Opening Hours:

Monday - Saturday: Lunch

Spend

$5 - $10 per person

Verdict:

Thumbs-down

Merchant Curry House

Unless you are accompanied by a regular, your first visit to Merchant Curry House may be a little strange. This small eatery is tucked away at the back of the Merchant Club parking garage, beneath the Purple Haze nighclub.


The menu board has no prices, and little relation to what's available. The food warmers are perpetually empty. A large cardboard cut-out of a mutant iguana oversees all proceedings. Don't let any of this put you off: you are very close to a good Fiji-style curry.


The best approach is to ask what's available. Our visit coincided with the availability of the chicken and lamb curries, and these were ordered with a vegetable curry side, dhal and roti.


The lamb curry (above) was a little on the bland side, but tender. A good meal.


This excellent chicken curry deserves a bit of explanation. The picture above is the 'live' chicken curry (as opposed to the 'frozen' chicken curry). The 'live' curry is $1 dearer and is prepared from freshly slaughtered free-range chicken (junglee murgi). The Hindustani swear that these make better curries than the 'soft', commercially farmed chickens. They also reckon that meat curry is tasteless without the bones.

We have heard good reports about the goat and various seafood curries but haven't had the occasion to try them yet. Let us know if you have.

You're expected to eat with your fingers (as God intended) but spoons are provided.

The proprietors seem quite flexible with requests: less roti, more roti, swap this for that and give me more of the other ... we heard all of these, and all were accommodated.

The members from the Merchant Club next door occasionally shout orders through the window: the curry house doubles up as the club kitchen and provider of 'curry chasers'.

Should you chose to eat in, be prepared to make conversation with the squash players passing on their way to the squash courts via the stairs ... you will also have to ignore your conscience as these masters of lunchtime exercise survey your artery clogging endeavours.


On that note, as is our tradition when reviewing curry houses, here are the oily remains of the meal. What can we say? Good Fiji curry always seems to carry a cholesterol tax.


Merchants Curry House accepts phone orders and (according to their sign) offer some catering services.

In Summary

Merchant Curry House

Merchant Club,
Cnr of Butt St and MacArthur St

Phone:

9229 457

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: All day

Spend:

$3 - $7.50 per person

Chinese fast food at the Handicraft Centre

How in the name of all that is tasty does one review an eatery with no name?

Casting around for inspiration, I wandered off to This Is Why You're Fat, a website dedicated to photographically documenting strange American foods that are hard to name, and even harder to explain.

While staring at The Sandwich of Knowledge it became clear to me that inspiration would not strike; so here I am again, reviewing a Chinese fast food hole-in-the-wall located behind the stairs, under the carpark, at the Suva Handicraft Centre.


The Lunch in Suva crew usually just refer to it as "The Handicraft Centre".

"Steak and Eggs at the Handicraft Centre?" someone will ask; and given that there's only one place at the Handicraft Centre selling food, everyone knows what he's talking about.

And now you do too.


The aforementioned steak and eggs is the signature dish. Several slabs of dalo and a good serving of thinly-sliced, marinated steak make up the base. Add to that the better part of a whole onion (fried up in the same soy sauce marinade as the steak) and top the whole plate off with 2 sunny-side-up eggs ... and a lettuce leaf.

This steak will not win awards; but at $7, it is generous, tasty, and hits the spot if you're hungry.


The chop suey is usually served quite hot in large amounts. The chicken (pictured above) and beef versions are par for the course. Unless you're running close to broke, you will want to steer clear of the sausage chop suey ... and likewise the combination (beef, chicken and sausage).

The soup must be mentioned: I haven't tried it -- and therefore can't recommend it -- but a large number of patrons seem to give it their full attention.


Service is prompt. Pay at your table when the food is delivered. The place is a little on the rough side, but busy enough. I usually eat at the concrete tables outside the establishment (the space inside is small and stuffy). Takeaway is a popular option, particularly if the weather is bad.

In Summary

'Hole in the Wall' at the Suva Handicraft Centre

Stinson Parade

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: Lunch

Spend:

$5 - $7 per person

Henry's Kitchen at the Suva Bowling Club

Henry is a tall heavyset man with ridiculous hair, plying his artery clogging and arse expanding trade at the Suva Bowling Club, after spending many years doing the same at the Lawn Tennis Club.

Henry's speciality is the massive serve, and large rear ends and protruding stomachs of the clientèle indicate that he knows what his punters want, and that he serves it up to them by the plateful.

The menu is entirely composed of meals that are usually described by cliché ridden writers (like us) as "hearty". If by "hearty" we mean "likely to cause heart disease" then this is entirely accurate.

In fairness to Henry, the meals are not in themselves particularly unhealthy, one just expects that the effects of a Morgan Spurlock type experiment (one where every plate must be finished clean) could be quite dire.

This Wednesday menu is fairly typical and includes:

• Roast Pork with Dalo
• Whole Pan Fried Sabutu with Spicy Sauce - The "Shock and Awe" dish of the menu, a huge ugly bastard that fills your plate, packs your stomach, impresses your friends, and empties your wallet ($15)
• Fish and Chips - an old classic done well, always hot and fresh
• Various Chinese type meals: Beef Black Bean, Pork Chowmein, Chilli Chicken, Spicy Pork Fried Rice.

If you want something not on the menu, it usually pays to ask. If they have the ingredients and know how to do it, they will make it.

We went for the most popular item on the menu: Meaty Bones with Dalo and Cabbage, and decided to try something chinesey as well - the Chicken with Mushroom.

The venerable Sui is full of artery coating goodness, big hunks of meaty bones in a fatty broth, three slabs of heavy carbs, some cabbage just so that the colour green is represented, with chilli and lemon. Wash that down with some of the cheapest draught beer in town and it will make you happy that millions of years of evolution have given you a digestive system. It may also guarantee a very unproductive afternoon when you get back to office.

Minus point: There is no good reason to skimp on the lemon, a bigger slice (or maybe two slices) would be good. You can always ask for an extra slice, but I never remember and then it gets too hard to find the waitress again (especially if its busy). Just give more lemon dammit, not like it would cost them much.

The Chicken Mushroom was chosen as the representative of the pseudo-chinese part of the menu. The vegetables are plenty and fresh (except for the mushrooms and bamboo shoots which obviously come from a can), and the chicken is obviously a fine specimen of battery farmed frozen Gallus gallus domesticus.

Certainly tasty enough, and a suitably large serve but nothing special. A more serious objection is that they seem to have poured far too much of the brine from the bamboo shoot can into the pot, and this taste is overpowering and offputting.

These are what bones look like after they are done. They say Pirahnas can do a better job of stripping a cow to its bones, but I put it to you that their table manners are poorer, and good luck getting blog posts out of them afterwards.

If you come on a Saturday you get to see what that green bit out there in the sun is actually for. It's like billiards (targeting balls at other balls, copious beer drinking) but the table is bigger and they don't throw you out for getting on it.

They have parking, this is good. But no toothpicks, this is bad.

In Summary

Henry's Kitchen

Suva Bowling Club,
Cnr of Victoria Parade and Grahame St,
Suva

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: Lunch and Dinner

Spend:

$7 - $15 per person

Kimbab 153 at Kundan Singh Supermarket

Kimbab 153 is not a restaurant; not even a shop ... it seems to exist mainly as a wooden table inside the front of Kundan Singh's Supermarket, adorned with the merchandise and a small sign; a small stall run by a small group of Korean women.

Kimbab (or gimbap, or kimbap, depending on who you listen to) is a great little Korean lunch or snack: a variety of fillings with steamed rice in a dried seaweed roll (similar to the Japanese makizushi).

There are 5 different offerings from Kimbab 153: Vegetable, Original, Tuna, Chicken and Kimchi. Kimchi is my personal preference: it has a delightful chilli bite to it. Prices range from $4.99 to $5.99



These tasty little lunches are well packaged. Each serve comes in a clear plastic takeaway container, complete with a small dose of soy dipping sauce. Major points for a nice label that lists all the ingredients at a readable size.

Obtaining a kimbab pack has become a little more difficult since the US Embassy construction project started ... so get in early if you want a selection of fillings to choose from. Turning up after 12:30 means you're going to get left with a choice of the less interesting ones (tuna and chicken) or nothing at all.

Occasionally, the ladies make the rolls on-site ... and sometimes they offer free samples.

Update [Picky Eater - 28 Feb 2009]: Someone's been reading Kania Tiko's comment below (or his mind). A trip past the Kimbab 153 stall today revealed the usual selection of kimbab ... and small tubs of kimchi at $5 each. Excellent!


By way of warning for those who haven't tried kimchi before, the 'small' tub should last you a few days: you're not going to want to eat it all in one sitting. Pop the leftovers in the fridge, use it as a condiment for your meals, and enjoy the health benefits & some extra peace of mind

In Summary

Kimbab 153

Kundan Singh's Supermarket,
Prince's Road,
Tamavua

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: 10:00am - 2:00pm

Spend:

$5 - $6 per person

Verdict:

Thumbs-up