Another thing about London (well, this small pocket of London I’m in right now): fish and chips. Like, where?
I don’t have fish and chips often. A handful of times a year. But occasionally one does get the urge. And this is especially true if you can’t have said meal. In the approximately local vicinity, there are loads of eateries. Millions of them. Bazillions. But no fish and chip shop. What’s that all about?
By far the most common kind of eatery, around here, and perhaps London generally (I mean the cheaper bits of it, to be honest), is the fried chicken bar. You know, the one that offers stuff ‘just like’ KFC only half the price. Which is quite neat, because for half the price you get twice the calories, twice the cholesterol and twice the artery-hardening grease and fat!
Oh, I succumb once in a while. And it’s not bad. But I feel my cardio-vascular health palpably deteriorating as I eat this stuff. KFC really is a high-class wonder by comparison.
These places have names like Hot Wingz and Chicken Bucket. (I made those up, but it captures the spirit.) They all have the same menu stuck on the front window with the same prices. I can’t decide if they’re all part of the same chain, cunningly disguised via a wide range of hugely imaginative names, or what. Just down the road there are three of them, all within a 100-yard radius. They all seem to do good trade, too: cheap grub’s big business, even if a double-portion induces instant heart failure.
Now, here’s my gripe. The nearest one (which doubles as a pizza place) has on its classy frontispiece the additional claim: ‘Traditional Fish and Chips’.
My arse!
The chips are fries. They’re skinny little things. The only difference between those and, say, KFC fries, is that the latter are quite dry and crispy and these are limp and soggy, drenched as they are in the fat of a thousand frying pans. The fish, of course, is the recipient of incredibly soggy, chewy, grease-addled batter, but where would we be without the grease?
So, this is the nearest thing to normal fish and chips you can get round here… a real progressive development for the New Millennium, YO: this stuff’s about ten times less healthy than what you’ll find in the average, ol’ fashunned fish and chip shop!
Look, I want milk in a glass bottle and ‘proper’ fish and chips. I’m getting a strop now.
Here in Dublin we have bottled chips. (Very handy for those confrontations outside the chipper.) Perhaps you should consider a move here. Battered bottle is just around the corner!
John
PS No/yes, the bottled chips-thing exists only in my brain.
I know the type of “Cheap Jack” Fish and Chips you have just encountered, such a disapointment – bet you felt like saying forget it when they started to dish them up in the shop…. The Chips are the same as they sell with all of their other dire frozen products and the Fish is from a Box.. Caught in New Zeland in 1987 and deep frozen since..but what can we expect… Frying Tonight..(Probably by an Illegal Imigrant)
Miss Chrissie no like Chicken Bazooka ? aww
Johns quite right about that, and the bottled chips thing and the bottled chips thing. (yes means…)
I remember Galway being heavily laden with traditional chippies, and I can verify the North is just as covered in them. (Though the South has more Chicken Bazookas and Rocket Joes than the North)In the North you can go to trad chippes with names like The Pharoah 2 and order a “fash supper” or a “pausetea suppa”.
Headington in Oxford has an interesting place about ten minutes walk from me. Its called Posh Fish, the whole trad experience. Their sit in is quite expensive with a Fried Breakfast (Or Ulster Fry, as they are trad known ‘back-in-the-day’, well those cost six quid. Their main trade is in carry-out. They sell a piece of cod at the average price, except its twice the size of any trad cod. Chips are small, regular and large portions, on an averagely priced scale, except that the small portion would serve as a typical side dish for two people, the large as a good sized accompaniment for five or six people. Posh Fish are complete with giant batterings and fattiness, in quite contradiction to their name. That said, they’re clean and friendly, and in moderation, really rather enjoyable.
I know a couple of good places to buy proper chips from (award winning at that!), but there’s only one chip shop in the country that I’d buy fish from (up in Suffolk). Thing is with fish is that you have to eat it the same day that it’s caught, otherwise a lot of that essential flavour and taste is lost. That’s why it’s only really worth buying fish from a chip shop if you’re by the sea somewhere. And if you’re buying from a fishmonger, buy in the morning to eat by the evening.
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