Chip Sign

Illuminated Chip Sign, with Chip Heraldry.
Installed outside Transition Gallery for the duration of the E8 exhibition

chips beautiful chips

Michele took these gorgeous photos on the chip shop tour

Chip shop tour photos now online

Check out www.walkwalkwalk.org.uk for more photos of the chip shop tour of E8.

Left over chips anyone?

I couldn't bring myself to put these in the bin..... but not sure I'll be eating them this morning either (note the beautiful poke, wrapped by the masters at the Golden Star)

Chip Shop Tour Tomorrow Night

Dear all,

We would like to invite you to join us for the Chip Shop Tour of E8, this Thursday 21st June. The tour is part of 'E8: The Heart of Hackney', the current exhibition at Transition Gallery.

The tour will lead you to chip shops you never new existed and to well known favourites; exploring the area of E8 through an examination of its chippies. Observe the variety of Formica ‘ranges’, look out for the flying dolphin wallpaper, or meet the Golden Star's Fryer - he thinks all chips are terrible – but possibly creates the best chips in E8!

Along the way sample the fare in one of our three specially designed commemorative chip paper wrappers. Witness live the under-rated art of chip wrapping and poke-folding.

Read our Chip Shop Stories and view the chip photo archive here on our blog, find out more about us at www.walkwalkwalk.org.uk

This event is also part of Architecture Week 2007 (more info at http://www.architectureweek.org.uk/event.asp?eventURN=3567)

Meet at 7pm at Transition Gallery, for a prompt start.

Hope to see you there!

Clare, Serena and Gail

ps the walk will take approximately two and a half hours

Transition Gallery
2nd Floor
Unit 25a Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road
London E8

http://www.transitiongallery.co.uk

Nearest tube is Bethnal Green
Nearest over ground is Cambridge Heath or London Fields
You can take any bus that goes to Hackney, along Mare Street, e.g. number 55 or 48

Chip Eaters with walkwalkwalk pokes

evening, Friday 15th June, outside Broadway Fish Bar

walkwalkwalk eat chips

Friday 15th June, Transition Gallery, E8
We eat three pokes of chips made by Broadway Fish Bar - freshly cooked, hot and delicious with salt and vinegar, and served in our specially designed commemorative chip paper wrapper! Get there quick to eat your own portion - in one of three special chip papers while stocks last!

E8 Chip Wrappers in the Perseverance

Spotted in the Perseverance pub on Pritchards road,
Saturday 16th June, approx 4 pm

Not all Fryers Resort to Dry White

At the Golden Star…
‘It’s such hard work. I work so hard. Everything by hand. Scrubbing and peeling, scrubbing, all the time. This time of year potatoes are terrible. End of season. They leave them sitting in the warehouse. They are all shrivelled, soft; potatoes are terrible! Put them in the machine to peel them, goes round and round – won’t work! They are too soft. Have to do everything by hand. Hours! And they are so expensive. So expensive! Never come down in price. Ten, twelve pounds a bag. Start of season three pounds. Wholesaler says ‘That’s the price’. And they are full of black bits. Can’t get them out in the machine. Have to cut everyone by hand. The eyes go right through the potato. If you put them in the machine, still leaves some black inside. There is no potato left! Hours I am cutting. Some people use Dry White. From the catalogue. Put the powder in the water with the potatoes, make them all white, take away the black bits. Customer thinks, mmm, nice white chips. But the fumes! Just a bit in the water and I’m standing over it and my eyes are hurting. Horrible. I never use it. Just everything by hand, so hard.'

more chip whitening

just finding out a bit more about this....
"Chip-whitener can be added to the water at this stage to prevent the chips from turning brown; however, chip whitener has a major disadvantage as it produces an acid layer on the surface of the chips that attack the oil, leading to rapid breakdown. The advantage of chip-whitener is that it allows for preparation of large quantities at one time without their turning brown, thereby achieving better utilisation of labour." that's from The perfect CHIP Information by courtesy of Hudson & Knight: Perfect Frying in Oil – The Ultimate Manual From Crispa Frying Solution online at http://www.hospitalityforum.co.za/ad_perfectchip.html

dry whitener

heard a shocking story in the Golden Star today, at this time of year, so we're told, some chip shops use a scary sounding product called dry whitener to pep up their end of season potatoes and disguise the black bits so they don't have to cut them out by hand - or waste lots of the potato by running them through the peeling machine 'til all the bits are gone......

getting ready for the chip shop tour

We went out today to show the chip shops our customised wrapping papers. Here's Serena with some from Brittania on Mare Street in one of our very own walkwalkwalk chip wrappers.

Regional Variations

Battered Mars Bar, Wolverhampton
“Its quite an experience but you could never eat a whole one, you’d probably drop down dead on the spot. I actually quite liked it, the mars bar melts but not all the way, it turns in to this “good gew” a bit like a mars ice cream but hot!” Abigail Amelia Hunt

Good Chip Shops

Golden Star, 127A Shacklewell Lane


You think they're good? No! Fish and Chips are no good, not healthy, nobody wants it. There's no good chip shops round here anymore. They're all gone. Chips are terrible!
Aaaah!!! They wrap them in the paper, terrible. Makes them mushy. And the fish, they wrap it too. All the moisture from the batter goes in the paper and fish goes dry. By time customer gets it home it’s just a mess. What can you do? We do same thing - customer wants it! I say 'You want crispy chips? Just put little salt, nothing else. But they put the vinegar, everything. Best thing eat it straightaway, on a plate. But they want to take it home, wrap it, aaahhhh.

Paper bags! Even worse. Oh no! All the oil, sticks to it, makes the batter soggy, fish dry...

No one does fish anymore. No one wants to pay for it. Other places they have the fish sitting out on the counter for hours. When customer comes in just heat it up, all dry. Been sitting there long time. My fish is different. You see any fish on the counter? No! I make it fresh every time. You have to make the batter crispy. People say 'why so expensive? Three pounds, four pounds, four pounds fifty fish.' They don't want to pay. It's all black people here now. They don't care about fish and chips.
(They can't afford it, says chip shop owner’s wife)
It's just white people want it. And there aren't any. Not even pies sell.

I've had this shop twenty-two years. Came here when I was fifteen, thirty-two years ago. One in Dalston for ten years before.

My chips are different. I make them fresh each time. Cook them about eighty percent, put in the back. Then when customer orders, finish frying them. So they are fresh. Not sitting in oil hours, heating two, three, five times.

But no one buys them. Five, maybe six times a week sell chips. School closed - used to be kids queuing at lunchtime. Now new Academy, don't let them out.

It's so much work. You have to peel the potatoes, cut the black out, wash it, cut it. Oh, my gas bill! All the water! By the time you've finished...And potatoes! So expensive! Used to be three pounds a bag; now five pounds, nine pounds even in winter. Don't make any money by time cut all the bad bits out on ninety pence bag of chips. And potatoes! Bad, terrible now - they leave them on the ground, frost, get stuck together, bruised. Other chip shops just put them through the machine to cut them, all the bruises, not just the black eyes - so you get bad chip. I do it all by hand. Hours I'm out there, cutting, peeling, washing.

(Boy and Mum come in the shop, order chips. Chip shop owner’s wife is doing the order. Mum is age twenty-seven and black. She has been coming here since she was eleven. The chip shop owner’s wife is very friendly with them)

Father taught me to cook when I was a boy, from eleven, in China. My wife can't cook. I do everything. She can do some things, serve the customers, finish off.

I came from Hong Kong, first wave of Chinese. None of my generation doing fish and chips anymore, just the mainland Chinese now.

My Chinese food more expensive than all others round here. One pound more every dish. Customer says 'Why this special fried rice more expensive? Only two pounds fifty at other place.’ I say ‘Go there then!' Their special fried rice - the shrimp, you can't see it! Mine, the shrimp, is big ones....

Secret restaurant

Britannia, Mare Street

This is a very small shop, very busy, Turkish, also doing kebabs and falafel.
There is a fruit machine in the far left corner opposite the counter. Half-hidden behind it, I notice a door marked Restaurant. There is only a very narrow gap between the counter ad the fruit machine through which you can reach the door. I ask the man "is there a restaurant in there?' (It seems unlikely given the dimensions of the way in)
'Yes. You like to see?'
'Yes please'
He went out from the counter into a back room, and moments later the door opened from the inside (swinging inwards, avoiding the fruit machine). I entered the restaurant. Through this portal of the tiny chippy I arrived in a cavernous Turkish restaurant. Tables were laid perfectly for dinner, painted murals decorated the walls, there was raffia and a built in bar in one corner. It was completely empty of people, except for the glamorous Turkish wife of the owner, seated at the bar on a high stool with her toddler son.
I asked if I could take a photo. The owner spread his arms, showing the extent of his hidden, windowless restaurant; then, hands on hips, planted his feet firmly and proudly to pose for his photo.

Star Fish and Chips, Wilton Way

I buy mushy peas and a buttered roll. This chippy has no spoons. I take a chip fork and try to eat on the hoof. It is impossible. I try breaking up the roll and scooping out the peas; but I can’t hold of the cup of peas and the roll and the broken bit of roll and get it to my mouth. So I eat the roll. Then I find a bench and slowly eat the peas with the round end of the chip fork.
*This shop gave me a spectacular plastic carrier bag with my order. The bag has a picture of a fresh wet fish with eyes on a bed of chips. To the left is a saltshaker with a smiling face and two feet; in one of its arms it holds a chip. The saltshaker has the look of menacing the fish with the chip. To the right is a vinegar bottle, with the vinegar visibly sploshing around inside it. The vinegar bottle is sitting down; it has one hand on its hip and one on the fish. The bag reads
DELICIOUS & FRESH
FISH & CHIPS
FRIED TO PERFECTION BY EXPERTS

Broadway Fish Bar, Broadway Market

Framed history of Fish and Chips. Also history of Cod

F. Cooke, Pie and Mash Shop, Live Eel Importer, opposite Broadway Fish Bar

Sunday. Closed. I walk past the window; the bottom right corner, by the counter, catches my eye. A paper bag, torn in half to form a single, square sheet of off-white paper, serrated along one edge, betraying its bag – origin. Written on it in black marker pen
SAT GIRL
WANTED
ASK INSIDE
At each corner of the poster there is a splodge of bright green pie liquor, flecked with dark green parsley, which glues it firmly to the window.

Ming Hai

The man goes in to the back room, through the coloured ribbon curtain, to make the chips. I wonder what elaborate fantastical machine he has out there for making the chips. The dividing wall has the look of a screen – it is sky blue, decorated with delicate bounding dolphins. It looks flimsy and gold tinged.

The menu goes beyond fish and chips. Also rice, spring rolls, rice and curry sauce. I think how there’s a tidiness to that: fish & chips + Indian influence = chips & curry sauce + Chinese influence = rice + curry sauce = back to (kind of) rice & curry.

Wrapped

I had a craving for chips, proper chip shop chips, cut from real potatoes unlike their more widely available and substandard counterpart the French fry. We had just been swimming and my belly felt the ache of a black hole ready to be filled. The closest shop was Simply the Best Fish Bar on Hackney Rd, I’d passed it many times on the way to visit Clare but never before ventured inside. Two men stood behind the counter the one who took my order had dark hair hidden under his chef’s cap and thick black eyebrows. He smiled at me kindly as I asked for a large portion of chips, wrapped and a can of coke. I watched in amazement as with out even looking he grabbed a can of coke from the impeccably arranged row of different canned beverages behind him. Tossing the can over his head with the lightest flick of his wrist the can stayed in the air as he scooped chips in to a bag, as it came in to land he caught it in his left hand placing it lightly on the counter and continued scooping chips in to the bag. He looked up at me for salt and vinegar distribution clearance, I gave the nod. He then took several layers of newsprint and with the grace of an origami master wrapped the fat sweaty chips in to a neat bundle. His hands moved in double time. He spun round and whipped a bag off the hook on the wall behind him, returning unfazed and centred he smiled at me holding out the bag of masterfully wrapped chips. With one last impressive flourish of his expertise he threw the coke can between his legs and over his head guiding it gently in to my right hand.

Chip Story

One time, when I was little, I went round to my friend Ginny's for tea, after school. I remember sitting at a small table, round the corner from the kitchen, just us two. We were having chips, and, unexpectedly, Ginny stuck two chips up her nose. I can still visualize it. I felt completely traumatized. I can't remember anything else about the visit, except the dark of the hallway and that Ginny wore skinny tight black jeans.
..........................................................................................

Poke of Chips

You don't get 'pokes' in London. I remember them in Penicuik (but I don't remember ever eating any chips). I just remember hanging around outside Penny Chip Shop. It was newly opened, big, bright and exciting. I don't know what I was doing there; I must have been too young to be supposed to go there, on my own, hanging around on the corner. I remember talk about the Casuals; which boy was a casual, and so on.
*Pokes are a kind of cone shape of paper to put the chips in
..........................................................................................

Regional Specialities/Variations

Penicuik: Poke
Irn Bru
Deep-fried battered Scotch Pies (mutton, round, flat, straight sides, hole in the middle)
Winchester: Pea Fritters
Bradford: Bag of Scraps - bits of batter that have fallen off (Given away free)
Fish cakes - made with thin slice of potato, little fish, another slice of potato, squashed, battered then fried
Never peas
No skin on fish

Haggerston Fish Bar

This chip shop is pristine, very clean and ‘fifties looking. It has light blue (turquoise?) Formica, trimmed in shiny metal, like a ship - with beautiful detailed embossed bits. There is a shrine-like end corner with a display of pictures and photos. On the end wall, up high, facing me as I come in, is a suave, moustachioed, dark-haired and beautiful man in a black and white framed (large) photo, loving the camera. I ask the man behind the counter ‘Who is this man?’ He replies ‘That’s the owner. But not now. Twenty years ago.’
‘He looks like a film star’ I say.
‘Actually, there are two old friends of the owner, they come here and have fish and chips in the back room together (He points through the ribbon curtain to the back room). They were all film stars.’ (I imagine the scene, the three old dudes round the table in the private room, with three portions of Cod and Chips)
‘You wouldn’t know them, but they were famous in Turkey.’

Finds in the walkwalkwalk collection
1.Chip Fork

This item was found on September 8th 2005, on the pavement of Vallance Road by the entrance to Weavers Fields. It is a flat wooden implement, about eight centimetres in length, narrower at the middle, rounded at one end and forked into two spears at the other. It would have been used for spearing and eating chips and is given away free at Chip Shops. This particular example is well worn, with grained in grey coloured dirt and must therefore have spent some time on the pavement being trampled underfoot. It is, however, preserved intact and is a good example. As a commonly used and discarded item, mass produced, of a standard design, and found in an area rich in chip shops, it was initially unclear from which particular chip shop it originated. In order to establish its origin I conducted the following experiment.

I identified the chip shops located in the vicinity of where the find was discovered. I visited the first, Quality Fish Bar, at 293 Bethnal Green Road and purchased a portion* of chips, served open (price £1.10). I then set off walking from the shop at a moderate pace, compatible with eating the chips, which I began eating, using the chip fork supplied with the chips. I walked along Bethnal Green Road toward Vallance Road, and the site of the find. When I arrived at that point there still remained about half the portion of chips – unless I had consumed at a voracious pace this would not be a point to discard my chip fork.

Having had so many chips left over in the first experiment, I then decided to visit a chip shop at a greater distance from Vallance Road – I would be more likely to get through the chips in the distance walked. So I continued my search at Mr Cod, on Cambridge Heath Road. Here the chips were available in one size only (price £1.49) and were the fries type. Appearances had been deceptive – the exterior of Mr Cod had implied a traditional thick-chip and wooden fork type chip shop – but was actually more focussed on chicken and non-fish things. Dismayingly the chips were served with a plastic fork, which scuppered this part of the experiment. I was advised by the man in Mr Cod ‘if you want proper fish and chips I suggest you go out of here, to Bethnal Green Road, turn left, thirty metres, to Regal. They have been there for thirty years; they are buying fresh potatoes and making thick chips’. Out of interest I ate the Mr Cod chips as I walked toward the next chip shop – being less substantial I had eaten nearly half by the time I arrived at Regal. Even if I had used a chip fork these chips would have been finished way before the Vallance Road site.

From the outside Regal Fish Bar, at 474 Bethnal Green Road (at the end near the tube), appeared not to be a traditional Chip Shop - also specialising in fried chicken and with stacks of the boxes for serving fries type chips in the window. (It is worth noting that this shop has a particularly good illuminated sign, featuring a large piece of fried fish.) Crucially, they were distributing chip forks –the box of forks was visible on the counter. Wanting to avoid fries again, which wouldn’t last the distance, I asked cautiously what kind of chips they made: ‘Very thick, fresh one’. I bought a portion (price £1.20) and again, I set off at the moderate ‘walk and eat’ pace toward the Vallance Road site. I continued eating the chips, which were substantial and still hot as I walked down Bethnal Green Road and turned left into Weavers Fields. I ate more as I cut across the park toward the Vallance Road exit. As I left the park I ate the last proper chip, leaving only the small crispy scraps, unsuitable for spearing. At this point I no longer had need of my chip fork so I cast it on the pavement, just beyond the park exit on the pavement of Vallance Road – approximately the point at which the archived fork was found. I believe this experiment provides good evidence that the chip fork in our collection originates from Regal Fish Bar.

* Note on portion sizes
I attempted to make a fair comparison between chip shops by purchasing what I believed would be the portion size suitable for one person. As menus describe portions differently (small/large, regular/large etc) I assumed the cheaper portion to be the standard one-person portion, and always purchased that.

chip shops so far

Ming Hai, Sandringham Road, E8,
21st February, 2.10pm







Britannia Restaurant, Mare Street, E8,
16th February, 3.30pm







Haggerston Fish Bar, Haggerston Road,
2nd February, 6.47pm






Star Fish and Chips, Wilton Way, E8,
19th January, 5.56pm





Broadway Fish Bar, Broadway Market, E8, 19th January, 5.17pm

walkwalkwalk chip shop experiment

Have you seen a bigger chip than this in E8? Tell us when, and where, for a chance to win a fabulous prize! Email your images, big chip stories and chip shop recommendations to info@walkwalkwalk.org.uk

The walkwalkwalk archive contains one of our favourite finds, the chip fork. The story of this find, ‘The Chip Shop Experiment’ forms the starting point for our project in E8. We will conduct a Chip Shop Experiment to establish the distances and routes, which can be walked from the chip shops of E8 whilst eating a bag of chips. Our research will entail us buying a bag of chips at various chippies and eating the chips whilst walking along. We will discard our chip forks at the point where we finish the bag. Our explorations to discover E8 Chippies will generate stories, as we ask for directions and recommendations and stumble across unknown venues.

From our research we will construct a map detailing the various locations of chip shops in E8 and the routes that can be walked from them. We will invite others to try out these walks, and consume chips - consequently littering their chip forks back in to E8.

We will create unique walkwalkwalk E8 wooden chip forks, printed with information – e.g. our web address, quotations, sayings and phrases - and paper bags for chips, printed with E8 stories and the map. These will be given to chip shops to use when serving their customers. We will thus disseminate our walk commemorative ephemera back to the locality- the wrappings and forks, with their stories and information will find their way to the people and pavements of E8. The chip forks and paper bags will also be available in Transition gallery – b.y.o. chips.

January 2007