Reviews

Columbus Fish Market boldly claims that “fish any fresher would still be in the ocean.”  It is a boast that surely lures in more than a few customers.  But what keeps so many people coming back to CFM is its emphasis on quality.  All of the restaurants’ fish is “top-of-trip” fresh (meaning it’s caught just before the ship enters port) and flown in fresh daily.  The menu is even printed twice a day to keep up with desired changes.

You’ll be tempted to make a meal out of the appetizers at CFM, and I’ve frequently done just that.  The Colossal Shrimp Cocktail ($14) is exceptionally firm and meaty, while the Jumbo Lump Crab Cocktail is excellent as well, with a wonderful creamy crab Louie sauce ($11).  If you favor hot appetizers, dive into the spicy Kung Pao Calamari ($10) or the Chesapeake Bay Crab Cake ($12.50).  It’s one of the best I’ve ever had.

One of the really satisfying things about CFM is that great pieces of fish are complemented by well chosen, delicious side items.  The Pecan Crusted Mountain Trout comes with scrumptious scallion mashed potatoes, skillet green beans, and brown butter sauce ($16).  The “House Specialty” Cedar Plank Salmon, which comes with asparagus, portabella relish, and goat cheese ($20) is very popular, but my person favorite is the Ginger Crusted Atlantic Salmon. ($20).  It’s served with sticky rice, stir-fried vegetables, and out-of-this-world orange-ginger butter sauce (I always order extra) ($20).  If you like combination platters, try the Shang Hai Seafood Sampler: salmon, scallops, and shrimp with a rice wine soy sauce ($22).

Columbus Fish Market serves up some of the city’s best seafood and is understandably a perennial favorite of both residents and visitors.
 

March 1999

This busy new place accomplishes its main mission in fine style; serving fish, of many kinds and in may preparations.

It might be a waste of space to review Cameron Mitchell’s new Columbus Fish Market: The place has been so busy I wondered whether all Columbus diners-out have already eaten there.  Much credit goes to the food.  I admit I’m pretty fussy when it comes to freshness in fish, and I enjoyed almost every seafood dish I tasted at Columbus Fish Market; given where we live, they do as good a job as I’m prepared to pay for.

Let’s get that “almost” out of the way first: It’s mainly because of the oysters.  I tried the fresh (raw) oyster sampler, and on another occasion ordered separately the Blue Point, Malpeque, and Wellfleet oysters.  They were fresh enough, but lacked that succulent moist briny flavorfulness that makes raw oysters a treat.  My guess is that they were opened too soon, and stood around on ice too long, to retain top quality, even though they were fresh enough. (This should be an easy fix).

Other fresh shellfish appetizers are very satisfactory.  The peeled jumbo shrimp cocktail is traditional, offering five decent-size, cold peeled shrimp with nice crisp meaty texture in a dessert cup, decorated with shaved carrot and red onion, with a nice spicy red cocktail sauce for dipping.

Other starters are pretty good.  The steamed PEI mussels with spicy broth were tasty and refined, not to mention very low in fat.  Garlic fried calamari was crisp, with some real garlic flavor, and nicely salty, with tartarlike remoulade sauce.  I was particularly impressed with the Salt-N-Pepper Rare Tuna with wasabi vinaigrette.  The tuna is indeed rare, wonderfully tender and nice in texture and flavor, beautifully set off with a few slivered veggies and lively wasabi.  A fine adaptation from the Japanese.

One of Columbus Fish Market’s great strengths is “Today’s Catch,” a listing of the fresh fish available that day.  You can see them in a glass case near the kitchen, and presumably buy fish retail to take home.  Without exception, the fish I tried was as fresh as could be expected this far from the sea – which, lest you mistake it, is high praise.  (Just FYI: My family used to run a fish market on a wharf on Rhode Island, where the boats would dock and unload and you could buy some of the same fish from the Today’s Catch category.)  Some come grilled, some come broiled, and some you can order steamed, “Shang Hai Style,” a style of which I have become very fond.  The fish is simply steamed with sherry, soy, ginger and scallion, and comes on a bed of succulent sticky rice surrounded by spinach.  It is exceptionally tasty, exceptionally satisfying.

Don’t ignore the rest of the menu.  You can get fried seafood, breaded and crispy-crunchy: choice of shrimp, flounder, scallops or all of the above on the CFM Seafood Platter, with coleslaw, hush puppies, sauces, and half a lemon gently wrapped in a yellow cheesecloth and tied with a green ribbon.  I’d bypass the platter and go for the Georges Bank sea scallops, to my taste the best of the three items.

Shrimp also are available broiled, with garlic mashed potatoes and a fashionably underdone mélange of vegetables: slices of red pepper, onion, green bean, carrot.  The eight not-huge shrimp were enough to satisfy hunger, nicely grilled and not overly seasoned, and the remoulade sauce went very nicely with them.  The garlic mashed potatoes had been mashed and mixed a little too long ago, but at least had some garlic flavor.

The “House Specialty” Cedar Plank Salmon is a variation on the old technique in which salmon is attached to a cedar plank covered with chunky salsa and served on cedar carved into a platters and scorched somewhere along the line.  It comes with crisp green beans and mushrooms.   More to my liking was Mama’s Pecan Crusted Catfish, accompanied by coleslaw, fries, and tartar sauce.  My mama didn’t cook anything this good, with its rich, nutty crust and fine fresh catfish.

You can get chicken and steaks at Columbus Fish Market; I didn’t, and I didn’t even see any go by to another table.

If you’re a wine drinker, CFM has a decent selection by the bottle; I particularly liked the 1997 WillaKenzie Estates Pinot Gris.  There are two listings of wines by the glass, both unusually extensive selections: One is on the back of the menu, mostly in the $4 to $6 range, and the other, on the front of the menu, is the CFM Single Vineyard Selections, mostly in the $7 to $8 range.  I tried three of these, the ’96 Kendall-Jackson “Camelot Vineyard” Chardonnay, the ’95 Foris “Klipsun Vineyard” Cabernet Sauvignon and the ’95 Tulocay “Haynes Vineyard” Pinot Noir, and thought each one well worth the money.

Deserts are not CFM’s strong point.  The Florida key lime pie with macadamia was my favorite, with fine crust and just the right blend of sweet and sour.  The crème caramel was on the ordinary side, and perhaps relied too heavily on gelatin.  The apple cobbler seemed overly sweet and cinnamony.

Service was invariably superb: cheerful, attentive, helpful, not intrusive.  And we had one experience worth note with the front desk.  One Tuesday night, my party of six (including food critic John Marshall) had reservations for dinner at 8.  We were kept waiting until 8:40 p.m.  We were told that the party seated at 5:30 p.m. at what was to be our table had finished eating a long time ago but was lingering.  As time went on, the young woman who was managing reservations took the situation in hand like a champion; she sympathized, apologized, kept us informed, and eventually comped us when the wait was over – she said, to say thanks for being understanding.  I’m pretty sure she did not know she was keeping not one but two food critics waiting.  What could have been a spoiled evening went happily instead.

I ended up awarding only three stars, although the place is already high among the threes.  My reservation is not the quality of the fish, but less-than-stellar execution of some of the dishes: The clam chowder and the Caesar salad are just OK, for instance, and the desert category is somewhat disappointing.  All these are fixable.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find Columbus Fish Market deserving of another star next year.

-John Champlin

June 28, 2001

“Good fish isn’t cheap. Cheap fish isn’t good,” states the frosted glass separating the bar from the entrance to Cameron Mitchell’s gift to land-locked seafood lovers. This sets diners up for sticker shock, but in truth, Columbus Fish Market isn’t too exorbitant, especially considering the level of quality. Start out with a delicious lobster bisque or rare tuna coated with salt and pepper and draped over sticky rice in a tangy wasabi sauce. For dinner, the lemon crumb Boston cod satisfies traditional palates. The menu changes with the catch.

August 8, 2002

So the Columbus Fish Market has a new menu.

As if I needed another reason to go back to one of central Ohio’s most superb seafood restaurants.

Sure, I liked the smoked salmon quesadilla new to the menu. The flour tortillas, cut into quarters, are packed with savory fish and cheese. They’re topped with a drizzle of sour cream and littered with red and yellow tomatoes and green onion. Talk about depth of flavor, color and textures. But I also like the old-school stalwarts, like the shrimp cocktail and claim chowder. A quintet of bouncy shrimp are hung over the lip of a cocktail glass and are matched with a soulful horseradish-laced cocktail sauce. Meanwhile, the soup is creamy and certainly not lacking clams.

Of the locally based Cameron Mitchell’s Restaurants, Columbus Fish Market revolutionized the way other eateries approach the cuisine.

New or old, the choices almost never disappoint. The “Titanic” wedge of iceberg salad is crisp and fresh, topped with crumbled hard-boiled eggs and crispy bacon, with halved cherry tomatoes scattered across the plate. I substitute the poppy seed dressing for Thousand Island and was happy I did.

The house bread—crusty sourdough with a pillow-soft center, is some of the best in Columbus. More interesting is the flatbread used in the crab and spinach artichoke dip. The paper-thin bread is firm enough to hold big scoops of the excellent dip, which has first-rate consistency and an impressive harmony of ingredients.

If you feel overwhelmed by the number of seafood choices, try the market trio. It has three styles of deftly cooked fish—blackened mahi mahi, hot-and-sour-glazed swordfish and cedar-roasted salmon. Similarly, the “shrimp, shrimp, shrimp” dinner offers three preparations of three shrimp ach—beer battered, broiled and bacon-wrapped, the latter pasted with a savory barbecue sauce. All are magnificent and it’ll be hard to decide which style you like best.

You can get fresh catches of the day prepared four different ways—grilled, blackened, broiled or Shang Hai. Simply prepared, moist and healthy, the grilled halibut leaves no room for complaint. If you’re looking for more complex flavors, try the crab-stuffed flounder. The fish is delicate, the stuffing flavorful and dotted with corn, and the butter sauce a pleasing complement.

All the entrees come with a combination of the following: garlic or plain mashed potatoes, sticky rice, vegetable medley and asparagus. All are adequately done.

With one hoof on land and a leg in the sea, the filet Oscar is a must-try for those who like steak and crab together. A lovely 8-ounce cut of meat is just the like I like it—bloody and easy to cut. The sweet crab flavor and well-balanced béarnaise—not too thick with tarragon—highlighted the beef. Three asparagus spears were crunchy and a spud the size of my fish was properly baked, soaked in butter and sprinkle with sea salt.

A Meyer lemon is somewhere between a lemon and an orange. The market’s Meyer lemon cheesecake is delicious.

Service is always attentive and friendly, from the time you walk through the door until the time you leave. This place fills up quickly, so make sure you make reservations well in advance.

April 14, 2004

Columbus Fish Market Crosswoods is raising money as part of the Tipping for Tots campaign. On Monday, managers of the restaurant will be serving guests and donating their tips to the March of Dimes, a national voluntary health agency whose mission is to prevent birth defects and infant mortality. This is the fifth year for the event, which has raised $22,000 to date.

Columbus Monthly
#1 Seafood Restaurant: Cameron Mitchell's Fish Market
Best of Columbus 2006 Readers Poll

AOL City Guide
City's Best 2006
Best Seafood
Columbus Fish Market Grandview

This Week
Readers Poll:  The Best of 2005
Best Seafood

Columbus Alive
Best of Columbus:  Reader's Poll 2005
Best Seafood

Columbus Monthly
Reader's Poll 2005
Best Seafood
Best Kids' Upscale Menu

This Week
Reader's Poll 2004
Best Seafood
Best Overall

July 2004
Best of Awards
Columbus Monthly
Best Seafood

This Week
Reader's Poll 2003
Best Seafood
Best Overall

Columbus Monthly
Reader's Poll 2003
Best Seafood
Best Cheesecake

Columbus Alive
Reader's Poll 2002
Best Seafood
“With fish and seafood flown in fresh daily, selections during lunch and dinner-a menu that boasts more than 80 tempting choices-are sure to please even finicky seafood lovers.”

June 28, 2001
Best Seafood: Columbus Fish Market
Columbus Alive
“Good fish isn’t cheap. Cheap fish isn’t good,” states the frosted glass separating the bar from the entrance to Cameron Mitchell’s gift to land-locked seafood lovers. This sets diners up for sticker shock, but in truth, Columbus Fish Market isn’t too exorbitant, especially considering the level of quality. Start out with a delicious lobster bisque or rare tuna coated with salt and pepper and draped over sticky rice in a tangy wasabi sauce. For dinner, the lemon crumb Boston cod satisfies traditional palates. The menu changes with the catch. 

July 29, 1999
Best Seafood Restaurant: Columbus Fish Market
Columbus Alive
"Try to get a reservation on Saturday night, and you’ll get a sense of the popularity of Cameron Mitchell’s recent addition to the Columbus restaurant scene. The Fish Market offers a menu that changes daily to ensure the freshest seafood available, as well as a fresh fish market for home cooking, and classes to teach you to how to grill (or broil or bake) it up right."