The thing about going out for fish & chips is that the portions tend to be tiny. (Well, except for Ye Olde King’s Head. The Queen Size portion is enough for me.)
Mrs. L.A. brought fish & chips and crab cocktails home from Ivar’s (a bit of an institution up here) for dinner one night. (Usually I cook.) She bought one three-piece order of fish & chips, with the expectation of sharing it. I mean, three pieces right? She opened the box and was like, 'I paid nine dollars for this? :mad: ’ Good thing she didn’t pay $14 for the three-piece halibut!
In spite of its status as a local institution, Ivar’s fish has consistently been subpar in my opinion. (The chowder is better.) You’re better off with Anthony’s.
Either is acceptable, but beef dripping does make for nicer chips. There’s a particular fish and chip bar in the middle of the esplanade at Great Yarmouth that I always go to when I stay with my inlaws in Norfolk - the chips are amazing - just crispy enough on the outside, steamy and soft inside, and with a deep yet subtle umame flavour from the frying in beef dripping.
Actually, in my experience, seaside offerings of fish and chips are often better quality than those further inland. It obviously has nothing to do with fish coming from the sea (because I’m sure they all source their fish through commercial supply).
I am now totally hungry for some fish and chips. Best I’ve had is at Tides Tavern on the water in Gig Harbor, made with Halibut. Every year for work I would have to go out to Lakewood, WA for a week and I would always make a trip to get the fish and chips there, with an Alaskan Amber to wash it down.
Fantastic stuff.
I work in Gig Harbor, so I’ll have to check that out. I moved to Silverdale this year and I’ve been very disappointed with the restaurant options so far in general and the fish & chips especially.
There used to be a place nearby that sold both Cod and Halibut F&C but they moved and I haven’t heard where they went. The halibut was juicier and more dense, but also much more expensive. I had rock-fish F&C in the San Francisco Bay area up by Mavericks. It was quite delicious and seemed to be halfway between Cod and Halibut to me. My fond memories are Friars Fish in Allied Gardens (a San Diego suburb – though I don’t know if the restaurant is still there) but that may be more memory than reality. Locally, the best I’ve had is a little hole-in-the-wall place called Seaward Fish & Chips. Theirs is a cross between beer batter and tempura batter. Awesome stuff!
Nevertheless, I’m still searching for better…
I prefer my mayo unpolluted – plus sometimes it’s nice on the fries/chips, especially if ketchup isn’t available. I stumbled upon Lemon by accident and, when there were none, was encouraged to use rice vinegar (sparingly). Both are quite delicious! I can’t taste much of anything in Malt vinegar; white vinegar is just a cleaning product in our home. :dubious:
There used to be a really superb fish and chips restaurant in Southampton when I was younger - they did takeaway at the counter, but there was a cosy side room where one could sit and be served the meal on a plate.
It wasn’t the same experience as eating out of paper, but it was good in its own right, because the meal could be enjoyed with a nice cup of tea (brought to the table in a china teapot and served in china cups) and thick, fluffy white bread with lots of butter to make chip butties.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia ]
A chip butty, chip sandwich, chip barm, chip batch, chip roll, chip muffin, piece an chips or chip piece (in Scots) is a sandwich made with bread or a bread roll (usually white and buttered) and chips, often with some sort of sauce such as tomato sauce (i.e. ketchup) or brown sauce.[1] The word butty is a contraction of “bread and butter” that came from northern England, perhaps Yorkshire or Liverpool.[2]
[/QUOTE]
Different. Additional seasonings will migrate into the oil so proprietors may not want to do that too much. Some purists would argue that the subtle flavor of the fish shouldn’t be covered up with other flavors, but these days masking the flavor of the underlying food seems to be quite popular.
This reminds me that when I was a kid, fish sticks (fish fingers, to some of you) tasted like fish. You know, that ‘fishy’ taste that some people complain about. Modern fish sticks don’t taste like anything. What’s the point of fish sticks or frozen, breaded fish fillets if they don’t taste like fish?
ETA: The fish sticks of my childhood also had some ‘dark meat’ in them.
You can avoid eating most of the batter and go easy on the chips, as said upthread a chip butty is filling.
I’ve eaten fish and chips in their ancestral homes on in both hemispheres - English seaside towns and New Zealand seaside towns. The NZ chippies were better and cheaper, and many offered six or seven different types of fish!
But, the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten was in an organic fish and chips restaurant by the coast, called ‘Organica’, in Kuwait. All the ingredients were fresh as fresh can be, the ketchup and tartar sauce were home made, as was the fresh lemonade. It wasn’t a bad choice for a first date with a New Zealand lass, that’s for sure.
I can’t taste much of anything in Malt vinegar; white vinegar is just a cleaning product in our home. :dubious: