FISHBAR — Restaurant in Manhattan Beach

11/5/23 We had an amazingly good time and fantastic food and drinks at Fish Bar on Sunday. Sammy was our waitress and was professional, knowledgeable, and kind. We ordered drinks, and I had to have a cup of their amazing new england clam chowder. Sammy checked in with us shortly thereafter, and we ordered our entrees. My wife had the Mahi Mahi tacos with a side salad, and I had the salmon entree with the garlic bacon green beans and coleslaw. Both dishes were well presented and quite tasty. Fish Bar is a happening place, and the food, service, and ambiance are stellar. Highly recommended.

6/20/22 What an amazing lunch today. Drinks, appetizer and I had the Honey Chipotle Salmon and my wife had the Halibut entree. Kat our favorite server was extraordinary and such a pleasure. A plus plus all the way around. Our favorite restaurant and yes we travel from the OC. The clam chowder is awesome...so yummy. Kat thanks for another Grand Slam.. Fish Bar..yes!! Recommended Love it!! 5/15/2022 A wonderful experience. Kat our server hit a grand Slam regarding customer service, kindness and positivity. My wife and I started with a few drinks and the coconut shrimp and yes I had a cup of their amazing new England clam chowder, simply heavenly. For dinner my wife ordered the fresh seasonal halibut with brown rice and sautéed spinach, oh yes..a home run. I ordered the Honey Chipotle Salmon with mashed potatoes and a Brussel sprout veggie slaw...this dish was just plain amazing. We thoroughly enjoyed the food and of course the fresh sourdough bread as well. One of our favorite places and Kat is like family. 4/9/2022 Another wonderful afternoon at The Fish Bar. What an awesome location as your day might include a stroll down to the beach to just chill or catch a cool sunset. There is a public parking structure right across the street where you can park for 2hrs for $3.75 and reload as needed. When you go to this fine local establishment make sure you ask to sit in Kat's section as her positive energy, knowledge of the menu and food preparation etc. besides her amazing service and personality, she is our favorite. Also ask that Josh mixes your drinks as he is quite the professional and skilled bartender. The manager is also quite friendly and helpful and runs a wonderful restaurant. So we started with Patron Margaritas and then New England Clam Chowder and Sourdough bread fresh from the oven...OMG so so good. My wife ordered the Halibut dinner entree with a Cajun kick accompanied with mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach and just loved every last morsel. I ordered the filet mignon with the same sides accompanied with some wonderfully grilled shrimp. Also we must mention Gerardo who helps with serving, in the kitchen and all around as he was so efficient and humble we had to call him over and thank him personally for his amazing efforts and caring demeanor. My wife and I love this place and every time we are in the South Bay area we have to swing by and enjoy a few cocktails each, some amazing food, service and people. Highly recommended. Prior Visit What a great find. Had Filet Mignon with shrimp skewers, sautéed spinach and mashed potatoes and the wife had sea bass with the same sides. A few top quality drinks and of course a coconut shrimp appetizer. Pure heaven! Kat was an awesome server...a terrific personality and quite knowledgeable about the menu. We highly recommend

1/29/22 Grand Slam of a good time.. Another great meal and drinks.. Kat is superb at her trade as a customer service server extraordinare and the bartender and cooks prepare piping hot meals. They have a great selection of dishes including mussels, clams, ahi tuna, sea bass, steaks, fish and chips, sandwiches and so much more. All of it comes out perfectly cooked and served hot and tasty. The clam chowder is awesome as are their salads and appetizers and don't forget to ask for their fresh and warm sourdough bread, umm umm good. Give a shout out to Kat and let her know you want to sit in her section as she is simply the...

Updated 6/5/25: It pains me to say this, but Fish Bar isn't good anymore. The quality is down, the recipes have changed, the portions are smaller, and the prices are up, way up!

I've been coming here since they first opened, but I think yesterday evening may have been my last visit. The staff are great. My review is purely on the quality of the food. When the server agrees at the end of the meal and says they've been getting a lot of complaints about the adjusted recipes and menu (new chef as of 3 weeks ago), it's clear there is a big issue.

They completely changed the coconut crusted mahi mahi dish. It's dry. It's under seasoned. It's new sauce is bland and watery. It lacks the previously abundant pile of large cut peppers, onions and vegetables it used to rest upon, and instead you get a mountain of flavorless white rice with a few slivers of julienned bell peppers, presumably there just for color. Oh, and it was overly charred and burnt on top.

My girlfriend ordered the salmon, which was served as an embarrassingly tiny skewer, better suited as an appetizer at best, but not for $36 and two $3 upcharges for pretty sad sides.

The lemon dill brussel sprouts were soggy and underseasoned, lacking a bright sauce or enough acid to brighten them up. I think they forgot the lemon (and the dill).

The mac & cheese was essentially flavorless carbs, buried in a lake of indistinguishable watery "cheese".

My mother's halibut was perhaps the saddest dish of them all. Served as a tiny filet on an empty oversized plate with no accompaniments or culinary plating effort whatsoever.

My brother's cioppino, his go-to favorite, was at best a light broth that lacked any depth of flavor that typically comes from cooking with all the bones and collagen of fish. The only rich part of the dish was the 3 sticks of butter that must have been melted into the bowl, which created a one note sauce better suited for dipping lobster tail than enjoying as a cioppino entree.

The ahi poke bowl was okay, but nothing too exciting or whimsical. There could have been so many more additional flavor components brought to the dish. It seemed depressingly basic.

It's sad to see the restaurant going this direction. But hey, at least we're not alone. Our server encouraged us to share our review online. So here's my updated review. If you're looking for better food, I'd drive another five minutes north to Playa Provisions or Bacari. You'll get a better quality dining experience at a more reasonable and much more deserving price.

For reference, my review here from 1 year ago was: Delicious food! One of the best restaurants in North Manhattan Beach! ⛱

Sadly, this is no longer the case. RIP...

I actually feel really sad to have to write this because the fact is, our experience while AT the restaurant was great. My gf and I decided to venture out and actually eat out AT a restaurant for the first time since the lockdown. So after not having had a night out in a year and a half, we decided to spoil ourselves. The prices here are NOT cheap, and the portions are fairly small, but for the most part seemed like everything was high quality and was a nice little atmosphere, and our server was amazing. It was a great night. Where the problem comes in was hours after we got home. She ended up getting VIOLENTLY ill, to the point where for two straight days, she could not keep anything down at all, and it was basically a waterfall.. out of both ends.

Now 4 days later, she is finally slowly starting to keep a little bit of food down. I however didn't get sick at all. But this is the last place we ate before she just went straight south out of nowhere. The difference between us being that I got the crab legs, which I thought were great, but she had the lobster. Lobster Mac n' Cheese to be exact. And while I don't know a lot about cooking lobster, I do know that the meat almost immediately starts to go rotten within seconds after the animal is dispatched, and lobster meat does not keep well past a pretty straight freshly cooked point. So the only thing I can think of it either they took too long to cook the lobster after killing it, or more likely, they used old lobster scraps for the Mac n Cheese, since it's covered in cheese sauce so who's gonna know if they use old scrap meat compared to fresh, and it had gone rotten.

While I can't definitively prove that Fishbar was the culprit, it's basically the only thing that makes sense. Whether bad food poisoning or straight up bad seafood, I've never seen her that sick that fast before, and I hope I never do again. Which really sucks, we don't often go spending $150 on a single dinner with just a couple of Long Islands, but we definitely didn't count on one of us getting sick from our first celebration "normal life" night out in forever. I can only hope the kitchen is more careful in the future with all their seafoods and don't let them sit for long before serving. Especially with...