Capetown Fish Market - Zanzibar

January 18, 2024

I went to Zanzibar for work so of course I ate a bunch while I was there. Mostly hotel food though. One place I did visit that I would like to review is Cape Town Fish Market Zanzibar.

I’ve only been to the branch in Dar es Salaam, very many years ago so this was a nice refresher. It’s such a beautifully done restaurant, very big, very modern, very open, right by the ocean so the sunset views are as you’d expect - PERFECT.

They have such a vast menu but we were all here for one thing and one thing only - seafood. If you are new here then I need you to know that I’m not the biggest seafood fan but I still had my fill of stuff. I tried the fish tacos (TSH18,000/ KSH1,050) and we also had the Kalk Bay seafood Platter (TSH96,000/ KSH5,600).

I have mixed reviews about the fish tacos - I absolutely loved the fish within the taco. It was two pieces of deep fried breadcrumbed fillet fish which were super tasty, the breadcrumbs must have been mixed in with some spices because the fish had a bit of a nice kick to it - really good fish fingers. The whole taco itself, very underwhelming - very dry & I know fish tacos are essentially dry but they are usually accompanied with some kind of sauce/salsa, they didn’t put much of the spicy mayo on it and the slaw… wasn’t really slaw😬 I would have been fine just having the fish on its own as a fish fingers type dish.

The platter included prawns, calamari, squid, fish fillets, mussels and fries and spiced rice. Their portions are quite large and very filling even for me who only ate the prawns and the fish and the chips and the rice. I clearly had quite a bit of everything-ish and it was all super tasty, the fillet fish especially was well marinated with a light crisp on the outside and a nice fleshy flakiness on the inside.

Not pictured is the chocolate volcano we tried for dessert (TSH16,000/KSH940/) - I wouldn’t recommend. It was just okay.

These Zanzibar prices by the way are so wild, why was our bill over 100k??? In this economy?? Then you remember oh… it’s not Kenya shillings but Tanzanian Shillings… so essentially just a bit over 5k but still quite a lot even in the Kenyan context so it’s quite a pricey place. The place is constantly busy because of many tourists, we were here on a Monday night and it was quite full. You will need to make reservations if you’re a big group. They can seat smaller groups of 2-3 without reservations. The service is quite slow though given the full capacity of the restaurant on most days.

It’s a nice place for lunch & dinner, very vibrant, nice ambience, nice place to hangout for sundowner drinks etc. If I ever come back to Zanzibar I shall go back there to try their non-seafood menu because burgers deserve love too.