'A sweet restaurant, fishly good': Italian Club Fish, Liverpool, reviewed

The yearning for oysters comes every day around 4pm. It's a palpable thing. A bivalve image floats unbidden into my brain and then hovers about six inches from my forehead like a mini-flying saucer from a 1950s sci-fi movie. Sometimes the shell opens like a mouth and the bivalve smiles and says "Afternoon, is it time?". 

Mostly I manage to ignore my imaginary friend and avoid a trip to a restaurant but sometimes I give in. I reviewed Renshaw Street Food Market before Christmas and the yearning hit. So in a trance I crossed the road to the Italian Club Fish and indulged in half dozen oysters. It set me up wonderfully for part two of the review. 

And encouraged me to come back to return to the Bold Street restaurant. 

The capesante Scozia (£6.95) was a triumph, sweetness and earthiness combined

The Italian Club Fish has been a Liverpool stalwart since 2009, an absolutely necessary part of the city's food and drink scene. Given its maritime location Liverpool should do fish and seafood restaurants better as my experience last year proved. The Italian Club Fish helps set the record right.

The exterior of the restaurant is as pretty as a picture in Mediterranean blues and whites. The theme is continued on the inside with an uplifting lightness complete with pastel prints of Italian fishing villages. 

That softness disappears in the back area where there's an Italian-restaurant-by-numbers design with black and white images of Italian celebrities although most are Italian American. As you dine Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Dean Martin, Gina Lollobridgida and Sophia Loren look over your shoulder.  

The only mystery to the decor is the old-fashioned signboard with the lyrics of Auld Lang Syne on the way down to gents. I'm guessing that's a nod to fact boss Rosaria Crolla's dad first landed in the UK and set up business on Scottish shores. Crolla runs the business with chef Maurizio Pellegrini.

As for the food, the Scottish oysters (£17) were perfectly shucked on that first visit with chunky and creamy flesh. A tuna tartare at £13.95 was a little too loose in consistency although the avocado and tomato added heft. There were too many salad leaves and the lime mayo was not to my taste, too cloying, leaving a sickly after taste. This was the weakest dish on my two visits. 

The capesante Scozia (£6.95) was a triumph, a fat fleshy Scottish King Scallop that was timed to perfection and neither over-cooked nor flabby. The combination of scallop and black pudding is common in restaurants, but here the Stornoway black pudding was used as a sort of soil base to the scallop and good grief that worked well. Glorious dish this one, sweetness and earthiness combined. The fish cakes (£10.95) have as the key ingredient Belhaven smoked salmon. They are robust affairs artfully put together. Another winner. 

There was a bit too much of one of the mains. This was the risotto Valter (£14.95) which comes with herbs, porcini mushrooms and goats cheese. This could have done with being half the size to give it a degree of finesse. As it was the flavours really worked well together with the goats cheese the king, giving the dish individuality. 

The special of halibut (£25.95) looked wrong but tasted right. The truffle mashed potato resembled grouting but delivered a rich result when bunched up with the just-so cooked halibut flesh. The trick to the success of this dish here was the little jug of bisque which when poured over the whole ramped up the fishiness to ten. I could have drunk that bisque as a broth. 

The desserts were entertaining. The affogato al cafe (£8.95) was an almondy delight. The customer gets to douse the ice cream with coffee and amaretto. This produced a peculiarly Italian experience, I could hear waves washing against the Amalfi coast. The charmingly monikered sgroppino (£8.95), a lemon sorbet, with a shot of vodka was another success. The chill of the sorbet on the vodka worked alchemy on both making the sum of the parts a refreshing success, almost a palate cleanser. 

There was only one real bum note and that was the absolutely terrible canned music. An Ibiza-lazy beat had been slung under eighties and nineties classic indie tunes ruining them. REM's Losing my Religion had been so mercilessly butchered live lobsters were scurrying to the kitchen screaming 'boil us now!'

By that time we were a bottle of grog or so in. The wine we'd chosen was a fabulous and lively Greco di Tufo from Campania. This had helped break the ice with my new friend, a ceramic fish with big red lips next to our table. He was a happy fish and we called him Piero. 

I said to Piero: "Dimmi, il pesce dalle grandi labbra rosse, come fai a sopportare questa musica terribile?"

He said: "È orribile ed è per questo che preferisco cantare con la mia bella voce baritonale Auld Lang Syne. Adesso tutti insieme."

Music and ceramic fish aside, the Italian Club Fish is a fine restaurant and worth a visit. Chef Maurizio Pellegrini shows a real delicacy of handling with the key ingredient here, he clearly has an intuitive understanding of how to get the best from our sea-borne friends. That capesante Scozia dish in particular will live long in the memory. I will definitely return.

Italian Club Fish is at 128 Bold Street. Liverpool, L1 4JA. This is a mini-empire as well with the Italian Club restaurant down the road on Bold Street and the Italian Club Bakery round the corner in Newington Street.