Restaurant Review - Go fish, Goldfish

Like Tom Catherall’s Lenox Square restaurants (Prime and TomTom A Bistro), Goldfish — his humongous anchor tenant in Perimeter Mall’s new food-chain wing — is lots of this, lots of that and plenty more of the other thing. On the one hand (the sushi bar and adjacent bar-bar, complete with cocktail pianist), Goldfish is this season’s preen-scene destination for Dunwoody denizens. Skin divers and water-sign folk will presumably enjoy the salt-water reef tank, the flat-glass waterfall that divides the sushi bar from the hot kitchen, the aquatic-theme ironwork and the subtle underwater ambience created by colors, lighting and shifting shadows. (They’ll look in vain for the eponymous goldfish, however. In its original concept, the restaurant was called something else.)

As a place to actually eat, Goldfish is one of few restaurants within walking distance of Perimeter’s food court with plausible culinary pretensions. Both owner-chef Catherall and Executive Chef Chris McDonald are highly trained. The wine list flows from the expected (Ruffino, Mondavi, Ravenswood) to the novel (a Rothschild cabernet from Chile).

Seating 300 adults in an 8,000-square-foot space, Goldfish appears to be drawing larger crowds than its name-brand neighbors, Cheesecake Factory and Maggiano’s Little Italy. Valet parking is offered. Reservations are not.

The mostly-seafood menu is an equally mixed catch. A large, intelligently seasoned crab cake is composed of sweet lump meat with only enough binder to hold it together. Perfectly fresh broiled Florida grouper and buttery, peppercorn-crusted swordfish are presented with creamy mashed potatoes and crisp, tender green beans. Grilled salmon is swooningly delectable — cooked just enough, slightly caramelized at the edges, rare and saline within. What’s not to like?

God is in the details. And God does not like the terrycloth-textured fried shrimp and oily, heavily salted but otherwise tasteless, fried oysters that are teamed with the crab cake. Nor does She like the four-times-too-salty seasoned fries that round out this $18.95 combo platter.

The swordfish is over-salted but not dizzyingly so. It is no match, sodium-wise, for the heavily salted crispy calamari drizzled with very salty aioli and served with a sharp marinara sauce that tastes like dried oregano and costs $8.95 as an appetizer. Like its cousin, mayonnaise, aioli requires a judicious pinch of salt, not a pound. Squid can be salty all by themselves.

Had I ordered the grilled salmon stark naked I’d have gone home happier. But no, I had to spring for the lunch-gimmick lure, salmon with romaine and iceberg lettuces, bacon bits (salty, natch) and blue cheese dressing (more salt). After a few forkfuls, I finished the salmon and the salad separately. Neither did much for the other ($10.95).

Chef McDonald may be responsible for this Great Salt Lake effect. To open Goldfish, he was hired away from the Pano Karatassos chain. The latter organization has been known for sky-high salt levels since its first link, Pano’s and Paul’s, opened in the 1970s.

Perhaps judicious consultation with a server (those I encountered were invariably well-trained, helpful and upbeat) could result in meals that are seasoned with more variety. Goldfish’s menu is as long as it is broad. Maybe a word will keep that old devil salt shaker away — and keep the otherwise quite good spinach, arugula, goat cheese, pine nuts and dried cranberry salad from being inundated in dressing ($6.95). Don’t listen when sorbet is suggested, though, not unless paying almost $7 for a single scoop of cool-and-wet, plus a few cookies, is your idea of a good time.

I’m being harsh. Goldfish strikes me as a big-time disappointment. I’m clearly in a minority. Early on a recent Saturday evening, I approached the host desk and was told that the wait for a table would be an hour and a half. To stand a chance to join the elect, we’d have to exchange a picture identification card for an electronic signaling device.

Sweetly the hostess inquired: Would you like to wait? Politely I answered: Would your electric tickler reach me inside the mall? She gave me a look that clearly consigned me to the unhip, uncool, un-mall-rat mass of men who do not regularly spend 90 minutes in the Goldfish bar before dinner.

No thanks, I said, handing back the tickler.

We ate faster, cheaper and better that night at Yen Jing on Buford Highway.

Goldfish, Perimeter Mall, 4400 Ashford-Dunwoody Road, 770-671-0100. Open Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m. Sun. 4-9 p.m. Cocktail and sushi bars open Mon.-Sat. between lunch and dinner hours. Entrées range from $6.95-$16.95 for lunch and $12.95-$26.95 for dinner. Cash and credit cards accepted.