Review: The Happy Hooker serves fresh fish tacos from a seafood shack on Dundas West

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.