It varies. They are available at my local chippies here in Scotland, and this is very much not a tourist area, we’re talking housing estate outside the local school. My old local one in Cornwall also did battered mars bars- also jaffa cakes- though I never tried one. That was in Bodmin, so although Cornwall, not really a tourist bit.
I don’t really eat fish, can I get some battered halloumi? Salt and vinegar please.
Not my experience at all. If it’s not cod, the kind of fish will be specified on the menu. Halibut is quite often a substitute offered at an extra charge. In California, we take our fish quite seriously. I wish could say the same for the chips.
If you are ever in Central California, check out Giovanni’s in Morro Bay or Padaro Beach Grill in Carpentaria. That’s one difference I’ll make between the US and UK. I’ve never had good fish and chips near the water in the UK. I spent three weeks in Brighton and was almost put off fish and chips for life. Granted, it’s a tourist area, but most of the tourists are English,
My favorite meal in Belgium, besides the steak/frites was moules provençale with frites.
Same here, I like my fries thin and crispy. And no yucky peas- please.
Now I’m going to have to make it to the local “pub grub” place that claims to be authentically British to see what they offer in the way of f&c.
Speaking of Mars bars, it’s interesting to note that the Mars bar in Britain and Canada is basically a Milky Way by American standards—chocolate-covered nougat and caramel, with no nuts—although the British version is usually a little denser and maltier, while the Canadian one tends to be slightly sweeter and softer. The old American Mars bar, however, was a different animal entirely: nougat, caramel, and almonds, making it much closer to today’s Snickers Almond. IOW, the American Milky Way is roughly the British/Canadian Mars, while the original American Mars was not.
I love soggy chips, especially if they’re quite brown. Haven’t had them in decades though, where do you get them now? Generally I don’t like chip shop chips as much as I used to, I think the demise of beef dripping as the cooking medium has a lot to do with that.
I don’t think the sauce you get in east central Scotland chip shops is ever called gravy, it’s called sauce.
As far as fish goes, haddock is the favourite one in Scottish chip shops.
Pier.
Unless you like dangling your legs over an aristocratic peer member of the House of Lords, if you do that sort of thing in the UK. 
But getting back to fish, the fresh country air may indeed be part of the reason that the fish & chips served out of that dockside converted school bus tasted so good, but I still say the freshness and well-practiced expertise was the major reason.
For those making their own at home, this terrific recipe for fried pickerel is equally good with cod or haddock. The recipe for homemade tartar sauce is probably good, too, but I just use a dependable brand of store-bought tartar sauce – either Loblaw’s President’s Choice or, if you like the kick of extra spiciness, Legal Seafoods Chipotle tartar sauce.
I think traditionally western scotland likes them soft (I was never a fan of chips growing up, but only got into them after liking frites in Belgium, so that might be why). I remember living in Reading too (near London, not one of the US ones), and their chips were very soft too. Nobody seems to want to map out the variations because they like the chips where they came from, normally, and suffer the chips where they end up…
I went hiking in Whitby in Yorkshire. It attracts largely tourists from other parts of England, is coastal, and has the best fish and chips I remember having in England.
NOoooooo!
I’ve got to have a light lager with battered fish!
Local pub serves a “farmhouse ale” by name of Spotted Cow, only available in Wisconsin (victim of interstate bureaucracy, or clever marketing ploy…?).
They put whatEVER you want on them!
We got lost in Bruges one night, and were pretty hungry by the time we stumbled upon a “Frites Bar” that we remembered someone recommending.
We had two of their “Specialiteiten”, each of which had a dozen toppings over thick, crispy fries. Mine had a pulled pork base with fried onions etc, wife had the Chicken Twist, which I didn’t get to try because she liked it too much.
Discontinued in 2002.
Some words about Belgium frites, a bit OT but not that much. Like anywhere, restaurants and takeaways try and sell product. By default in a restaurant, something with frites won’t come with anything unless stated on the menu, you have to ask for mayonnaise. You will get ten or so bottles of sauce at a chip shop too, including ketchup, “curry sauce”, samurai sauce (a tart hot sauce), Andalouse sauce (ketchup + mayo with peppers, sort of like cocktail sauce) and a few others (mayo obviously too). These are the same things you’ll also get a kebab shop, and some of the choices are probably german influenced. You’d typically be able to get things like currywurst too (german speciality), which is a salty sausage who’s curry flavour actually comes from covering it with ketchup and a sprinkle of curry powder.
A note about what they called “curry sauce”. It has little in common with any normal curry sauce you’d otherwise have had. It’s basically yellow mayonnaise with little additional flavour, and not great (the country isn’t one who has typically loved hot food, though their thai food tends to be authentically hot, much more than the UK versions).
The chippie near me in southern England lists cod, rock, pollock, haddock, scampi, and salt & pepper squid.
An interesting article and it kind of confirms my experience of Germany by omission. Currywurst is a north German thing. I remember visiting Hamburg in 1996 and the railway station smelled of Cinnamon and apple, ie: strudel. When I visited in 2024, it was smoked sausage and curry powder, there was at least ten shops in the station selling it. I lived near Hannover (mid Germany, 2016) and Ulm (South, 2000), and I don’t recall ever smelling a currywurst there. I can’t recall seeing it for sale. North German Donner kebabs are also different from south German ones too. But this is all off-topic, so I will stop now.
Interesting array of sauces. The only sauce I have ever really liked (I dont count Malt Vinegar as a “sauce”) was the Disneyland Pommes Frites dipping sauce- a “creamy, tangy Cajun-spiced remoulade”. I will sometimes dip in 1000 island dressing.
Head round the nearest offy[1], and grab yourself a can first. Simple.
also known as an ‘off licence’; a shop licenced to sell alcohol to be consumed off the premises ↩︎
Last time I was in London (15 years ago?), my wife and I were starving and we grabbed some fish ‘n’ chips from a place near Camden Town tube station. I don’t know if I would have called it a “proper” takeaway shop (whatever that means), but it certainly didn’t seem touristy. It really hit the spot and I thought it was surprisingly cheap at the time.