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.