Fish Basket Restaurant

Fish Basket is a Sharjah seafood favourite on Jamal Abdul Nasser Street, a small, unpolished room where the draw is a market counter at the entrance rather than the dining room behind it. Guests pick their fish by weight from a bed of ice - hamour, sheri, pomfret, lady fish, king prawns, calamari and lobster - then choose the preparation: charcoal-grilled, fried, or cooked tajine-style in spiced gravy. The kitchen has been running the same short playbook for well over a decade, and for regulars it has become the default stop when a proper fish dinner is needed without the resort-price equation. The table is set quickly with the Lebanese mezze that frames every meal here: hummus, tabbouleh, garlic sauce, tahina and a steady stream of hot flatbread straight from the oven. The grilled hamour with the house marinade, butterflied prawns and sayadieh rice are the orders to build the meal around, and the three house sauces - garlic, chilli and tahina - are worth working through. Portions are generous, the seafood genuinely fresh, and pricing noticeably gentler than the emirate's waterfront destinations for comparable quality. The room shows its age: the fit-out is dated, tables sit close together, and a busy evening can feel tight. Service is quick and the older staff are warm, though newer servers can be less attentive when the restaurant fills. Come for a proper, unpretentious seafood meal where the fish leads and the setting is beside the point. Iftar and peak dinners are best avoided if quiet is the priority; any other time, the turnaround is fast and the reward on the plate is the real argument for the drive.