Review: The Happy Hooker serves fresh fish tacos from a seafood shack on Dundas West
The Happy Hooker ★½
887 Dundas St. W., 647-769-4243
Chef Attilio Pugliese has opened a new seafood shack specializing in fish tacos—perfect, plump fish tacos. He piles soft corn tortillas with crisp beer-battered grouper, breaded baja or grilled shrimp and tops them with lime crèma, smoky house chipotle sauce and bright, crunchy shredded cabbage. The chalkboard menu—branded with Ocean Wise’s stamp of sustainability—has a few other options, too, like an ersatz corn dog made of breaded, fried ground shrimp and served with sweet-and-sour fish sauce. It’s a cheeky combination of a fairground snack and Vietnamese sugarcane shrimp. Fish and chip brings an astonishingly tender hunk of fried grouper, but the thin-cut fries alongside are burnt. Marlin shows up both taxidermied outside the door and chopped into a lime-zinged patty for a fine fish sandwich. The room resembles a beach-side surf hut, with plywood tables, chem-lab stools and ’90s R&B on the stereo; it’s the sort of place where it’s not only okay to have taco grease dribbling down your chin, but expected. Unlicensed.
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The Happy Hooker ★½
887 Dundas St. W., 647-769-4243
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Chef Attilio Pugliese has opened a new seafood shack specializing in fish tacos—perfect, plump fish tacos. He piles soft corn tortillas with crisp beer-battered grouper, breaded baja or grilled shrimp and tops them with lime crèma, smoky house chipotle sauce and bright, crunchy shredded cabbage. The chalkboard menu—branded with Ocean Wise’s stamp of sustainability—has a few other options, too, like an ersatz corn dog made of breaded, fried ground shrimp and served with sweet-and-sour fish sauce. It’s a cheeky combination of a fairground snack and Vietnamese sugarcane shrimp. Fish and chip brings an astonishingly tender hunk of fried grouper, but the thin-cut fries alongside are burnt. Marlin shows up both taxidermied outside the door and chopped into a lime-zinged patty for a fine fish sandwich. The room resembles a beach-side surf hut, with plywood tables, chem-lab stools and ’90s R&B on the stereo; it’s the sort of place where it’s not only okay to have taco grease dribbling down your chin, but expected. Unlicensed.){kind=link}
can chefs and restaurant owners in the city please stop opening snack bars, taco, sandwich, and off the cuff effortless bbq joints, real chefs in the city have more to offer and instead of just jumping on the snack food craze, maybe we can try and bring a little class and finesse back to the craft and teach the next generation of cooks how to actually cook instead of dropping everything in a deep fat fryer.
Right on pete
I think the fact that affordable restaurants like this are opening up, and, allowing people to eat out on a more frequent basis, while showing that you can get chef created, delicious food, for a similar cost to McDonalds or another chain, is a step in the right direction with the dining scene in Toronto. Variety is the spice of life, and, I, for one, appreciate that Toronto is running the gamut, providing delicious, chef created food, from $3 to $40 a plate.
The food here is gross. I was very sad after I tried the food here. The tortillas fell apart right away making it super hard to eat. I feel like they were very stale for a soft tortilla to do that. The fish on my taco came in tiny cubes that were overcooked and not appetizing. The plate in General looked nasty. It was a waste of money. Can’t even compare to others in the city.