Friday Food Porn: Something Fishy

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford

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Safety Restaurants--that's what this week's review of Flying Fish is all about. It's about those places you keep in your back pocket like cab vouchers and the phone number of you favorite bail bondsman, held out against the day when you'll need them desperately and be glad you planned ahead.

There's an old saying that goes something like, "It's better to have a gun and not need one than to need a gun and not have one." And I feel the same way about places like the Flying Fish--thoroughly dependable places, workhorses with years behind them, restaurants with menus offering a little something for everyone and nothing too out of the ordinary. I keep a bunch of these kinds of places in my head at all times, just waiting for the night when I might really need a solid place for fish, a reasonable steakhouse, or somewhere I can get a waffle at three in the morning. And I'm always glad to have them when I need them.

Photo courtesy Peter Mumford

​"That's what being a Safety Restaurant is all about," I wrote for this week's review of Flying Fish. "It's about being dependable. Consistent. Remarkable mostly in how completely unremarkable everything is." There are no surprises on the menu here. Nothing too avant garde or strange. Nothing on the floor or in the kitchen to put a snag in the orderly progression of a night out at dinner.

Neither was there anything which, for me, stood out as being so extraordinary as to ruin the flow of the meal and cast all the other plates in an unfavorable light. Everything was solidly good, and the deviations minor. But one thing I did appreciate? The simple beauty of many of the plates constructed by chef/owner Christine Keff and her crew in the kitchen. And for this week's slideshow, photographer Peter Mumford captured some of the most lovely examples as a way to rev up your appetites for the coming weekend.

Don't have any other plans for dinner yet? Then it's the perfect night to try out Flying Fish. You can read the review here, and check out all the pretty pictures right over here.