Yum! On our visit, we happened to be staying the next block over from the Sydney Fish Market--a blessing and a curse. We found ourselves over here for meals on four separate occasions on our six day stay!
With their site saying that they opened at 7, we eagerly sprung out of our beds early in the morning and skeedaddled on over to the fish market. We found however, that although most places listed that they opened at 7, they didn't really have their full offerings available until closer to 8; this was certainly true of the Fish Market Cafe. No worries though, it's easy to kill some time by taking a quick lap around to see the fresh catches of the day. We found ourselves back at the FMC a number of times due in part to their sheer number of items.
Dishes we had here included the grilled seafood platter, oysters, fish and chips, and some sushi/sashimi bar items. The grilled seafood platter (for two) would've easily been enough to feed our party of four on its own. With a mound of seafood on top of a mound of chips (read: fries), the standouts for me were the HUGE barramundi filet, the in-shell scallops, and the fries--seriously, the fries were excellent and delightfully potatoey while still maintaining their crispness. My mom really liked the little grilled octopus and the sweet chili shrimp. The separate order of fish and chips was fine. Again, the chips were excellent. The fish was pretty good and definitely fresh, but they were a bit heavy handed with the batter for my own personal liking. The sashimi was fresh and delicious, and I absolutely loved the scallop and salmon sushi. However, their super big sushi rolls were only okay. They were seemingly more gimmicky than anything else with tons of rice, and the krab was kind of a bummer when there was obviously so much fresh crab readily available.
One thing that I loved about FMC was their variety of dipping sauces. I am a dipping sauce fiend, there's no denying it. They had eight different options, but I only tried three of them because unfortunately, none are included with your order and you have to purchase each separately. After dropping a solid amount of money just for the plates themselves, I wasn't feelin' Mr. Moneybags on dipping sauces. Their tartar sauce was perfectly fine, but by no means amazing. The peri peri sauce was good, but I think my favorite was the sweet chili. It had a great amount of kick to it.
Pricing is a bit on the high side, but that's to be expected I suppose from the fish market where everything is presumably super fresh. It's definitely worth a try, but I personally think that some of the other places in the market are probably more worth it if you're in search of super fresh seafood. It's a tiny bit less appetizing when you see everything pre-prepared and sitting under warmers.
Make sure you have cash! They don't accept card. There is an ATM right by the register, but this place gets poppin' and you don't wanna be *THAT GUY* that slows down the whole operation. read more