Fish Bar

One of the newest kids on the Ossington stretch is Fishbar and it was a long time coming as the opening was delayed a good 6 months.  The result is a an old storefront transformed into long and narrow space with exposed brick featuring re-purposed furniture and tables packed in so close together that it's impossible not to eavedrop on your neighbors conversations.  

Like it's name suggest - you come here for fresh seafood served tapas style with oyster platters, fresh fish served different ways, and a variety of other sea creatures. 
After 20 minutes of sitting and staring at the recycled paper menu, our orders for our drinks were taken and then after another 10 minutes our meal orders were taken!

We started our evening off with a selection of their oysters from PEI, and West coast.  They were presented with a selection of unique sauces - grainy mustard, ponzu sauce and their seafood sauce.  Very fresh and for me always a great way to start off a meal. 
It was necessary for me to try the steelehead trout rilette.  My good friend Ben was raging about how amazing it was and definitely wanted to see if it was worth the hype.  It was presented in a small mason jar, topped with clarified butter for you to spread on your crostini.  It was definitely very buttery and creamy and felt very decadent.  It was good!. 
Also we both are savoury types of people so we couldn't resist and ordered the salty white anchovies which was served on sourdough crostinis.  Three of them came out presented very cleanly on a bed fruity gremolata.  They were very fresh and salty while the gremolata provided a good balance of sweetness and the crostini was a perfect crunchy texture.
The calamari was breaded with panko and came out hot and flaky and served with a sriracha aioli which was a nice touch of heat!
I was interested in trying the tuna sashimi as you don't really see sashimi preparation outside of a japanese restaurant and it was done nicely and clean.
Finally off the mains on the menu, we had the butter poached scallops.  The portion size was a bit disappointing as only 3 of them were on the plate and they weren't too big.  However the french fries were nice and crunchy and salty which was an important element to us.
Throughout our dinner, our water glasses remained empty and we watched our server dash around most of the night with sweat dripping from his temple.
I would definitely give it a few more months for this restaurant to work out it's kinks as I see that there is a lot of potential here!
*** stars
Fishbar
217 Ossington Ave., 
647-340-0227, fishbar.ca