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....