So … this week we went to a place in B’s neighborhood. Three Fish has been open two or three years and is a venture of a couple who entered the local dining scene a few years earlier yet with Prima (he’s a chef, she’s a manager). I know the latter place very well—it’s a five-minute stroll from my home and I eat there once or twice a month. But whereas Prima is a small, casual, completely unpretentious place which overachieves in the kitchen, Three Fish is almost the opposite: a large space, with a studied elegance to its décor and ambience speaking to its upscale ambitions. The fare is reasonably good (focused on seafood as you might guess, in contrast to the Italian fare of its sibling establishment), but it wouldn’t turn me into a regular patron.

I’d only been here for dinner before, and on first glance I was impressed with the lunch menu. There’s a good balance of appetizers, salads, sandwiches, and entrées, about a half-dozen each. Although the dominant theme is seafood, there are enough alternatives that diners of alternative preferences needn’t avoid the place on that account.

Our selections stuck to the seafood theme. We started with the fritto mista appetizer, which we shared. This was an innovative variation on the ubiquitous fried calamari. In addition to squid, the dish included shrimp, artichoke hearts, and red peppers, all fried in a light corn meal batter. A spicy lime-chipotle aioli came on the side. The seafood was tender and the vegetables provided textural contrast. When we ordered the dish I was afraid it would be too large for lunch, even as a shared appetizer, but it was an appropriate size.

For my main dish I had an ahi tuna sandwich, a thick tuna steak grilled medium-rare—more rare than medium—with fixings that included grilled onions, tomato, and arugula, A faro salad came with this. The entire combination sounded and looked better than it tasted. It was all rather bland; even the capers and chopped olives in the faro salad were tasteless.

On a positive note, I was pleased with the wine selection. About fifteen choices are available by the glass. For a change, B and I both went with the cheap stuff; I ordered the house red, $3.95 a glass, and was pleasantly surprised with its quaffability.

The service was generally friendly, although our server’s recitation of the specials left something to be desired—B ended up ordering one of the items without realizing or being told it was a kind of fish (one we’d never heard of and whose name I can’t recall—readers should refer to B’s review).

As might be expected, the fish theme is reflected in the décor. Paintings of fish, some more recognizably so than others, are on the walls and the carpeting has a vague wavelike pattern. The highlight of the space for me is the large concave window wall; the high windows give the place an airy and spacious feel.

Three Fish is open until 3 p.m. before closing up to prep for the evening clientele; it may be the place to come for that two-martini lunch you’ve been thinking you need. A full bar is adjacent to the dining room and based on dinner excursions I can recommend the martinis.

Three Fish doesn’t meet, let alone exceed, the expectations it raises from its menu, look, and connection with Prima. But it’s a pleasant place and if you live in the neighborhood—broadly construed—you can claim you’re an urbanite.

I puzzled about the name for a while. An anglophile aunt used to read bedtime stories from a book of English folklores to me and one of my favorites was about the three fish. Apparently there were three fish in a pond: a wise fish; a sometime wise fish; and a never wise fish. One day two fishermen, going by the pond, spotted the fish and they hurried home to get their nets, these fish were too fine to be ignored. The fish were very frightened. The wise one swam through an opening from the pond into the river and escaped. The sometime wise one floated, belly up, on the surface pretending to be dead. The fishermen, thinking it dead, ignored it. The unwise fish swam to the bottom of the lake and was soon snared.

Three Fish is located on Excelsior Blvd. in a patch of developed land just south of Lake Street. When I first moved here this area was virtually undeveloped but now there is a slew of tiny restaurants, coffee shops, etc all anchored by a huge organic grocery store. The restaurant has the feeling of brand newness to it. The walls are set in earth tones and shades of blue. At the entrance there is a sizeable bar, which one has to skirt around to get to the main dining area. There is, obviously, a fish theme to this place and is reflected in the art on the walls.

As seems to be our norm these days – thanks to A’s schedule – we arrived at the restaurant at 1:30 PM. A bit late for lunch perhaps, but then one doesn’t have to wait for a table. The dining room was virtually empty with the exception of an elderly couple sitting on the table next to us. We have been to dinner here before and have found the restaurant to be a fairly lively place, with the diners spilling over into the bar area. Our waiter, looking like a youthful Brigham Young, seemed new and didn’t know the menu very well. There was a fish special sandwich (that I ordered) whose name and description defeated both A & I --  two inquires to the waiter didn’t help matters much.

The menu for lunch consists of the usual assortments of soup & salads (the smoked salmon herb salad seems to be a standout); the appetizers are a bit more interesting: a daily crostini special, steamed mussels and a fritto misto shrimp calamari with red peppers; the entrées, as you might expect in a seafood restaurant, are almost all seafood based: seared sea scallops; horse radish crusted Alaskan cod; crab and potato quiche; grilled chicken artichoke and four cheese risotto; and shrimp and roasted garlic ravioli. There are a few sandwiches on the menu. The grilled ahi sandwich caught my attention (and it must have A’s because he ordered it) as being a unique item on the menu.

There are seven red and white wines by the glass. The reds run the gamut of quality, from the undistinguished house red (which A seemed to enjoy) to the pricey Baron Philippe Rothschild Escudo Rojo. I settled for a moderately priced Chateauneuf de Gadagne – an extremely young and somewhat acidic wine. I shared the fritto misto appetizer with A. This consisted of small shrimp, deep fried in probably the same batter as the calamari and the red peppers. A pretty undistinguished dish with the spiciness being its only redeeming quality. For my main dish I had the sandwich special which was a Terakihi polenta sandwich. I have since discovered that the Terakihi is a silver fish found off the coast of New Zealand. The sandwich was extremely bland and boring and made me wonder about the poor Kiwi fish that had traveled all the way only to be served in this unappetizing way. I had a taste of A’s sandwich which wasn’t great but certainly better than mine. The fish in his sandwich was grilled lightly and verged upon the uncooked. The elderly couple next to us had also ordered this sandwich and then complained about the fish being raw. The manager tried his best to mollify them with offers of free food but to no avail. We ended our meal with cups of espresso. A most disappointing meal that came to around $43.00 and even though this restaurant is in my neighborhood we should have escaped like the wise fish towards Uptown rather than being netted like its dumber friend.