My spouse and I dined at Lionfish for dinner on a Thursday
evening in early July 2018. Lionfish is open daily for dinner only. You can
make a reservation using the online Open Table system. The restaurant was busy
on the night that we visited, but oddly, three young ladies were stationed on
various nearby street corners with copies of the menu and the task of enticing
visitors to stop by for an impromptu drink, snack, or meal.
Lionfish opened in the Pendry Hotel (owned by Montage Hotels
and operated by Clique Hospitality) in February 2017. The hotel and restaurant
occupy a prime mid-block spot on bustling Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp District.
Although the main dining area of Lionfish is situated on the street level, a
more casual outdoor lounge is located on the rooftop. The main dining room is visually
impressive, with soaring ceilings in the bar, lounge, and front of the dining
room, and large windows that allow a view of the sidewalk patio. The more
formal part of the dining room has lower ceilings but offers views of the
glassed-walled kitchen. A second floor mezzanine overlooking the bar and lounge
area offers overflow and private dining. The color scheme is neutral, with dark
woods, attractive furniture, and interesting lighting and wall décor.
Lionfish serves contemporary coastal cuisine featuring
seasonal ingredients and local seafood. (Select meats are also served.) To
start, we shared the mushroom gnocchi, which was a beautifully presented dish;
however, we thought the portion undersized because our server billed all the
small plates as shareable. For our entrees, we both ordered sea bass, but of
different origins and with different preparations: the Baja striped sea bass [served
with squash, fennel, and olives] and the local bass [served with mussels,
legumes, and chorizo]); the local bass dish was our clear winner of the two
entrees. At our server’s gushing suggestion, we ordered a side dish of Brussel
sprouts with squash, but we found that the other ingredients of malt vinaigrette
and goat cheese made it taste rather unpleasant. As our dessert, we shared the
yummy peanut caramel tart garnished with peanut brittle, kettle corn, meringue
(although it was more marshmallow fluff than egg white), and vanilla ice cream.
When we finished our dessert, our server inquired as to whether we liked it,
and tongue-in-cheek, we presented her with our clean plate and told her that it
was terrible and that she should remove the charge from our bill. (As we were
paying our bill, we noticed that she had, in fact, deleted the dessert from our
charges! We were stunned; we often make a similar joke to our servers after
“licking our plate clean”, but this was the first time that one really didn’t
understand that we weren’t serious! However, she was nowhere to be found to fix
the error when we signed our check.)
Parts of our service were good (the bartenders were particularly
nice and helpful), and other parts were non-existent. Some of our food was
tasty, and others were not. But we enjoyed the busy atmosphere of the interior space
as well as sitting on the sidewalk patio to people-watch.
