Fish and chips is the dish Britain is best known for, and unlike a lot of national dishes it is genuinely still eaten. There are around ten thousand chip shops in the UK, most of them independent, and almost every high street and seaside front has one.
What you get
A fillet of white fish — usually cod or haddock, sometimes plaice or rock — dipped in batter and deep fried, served with thick-cut chips. The batter should be crisp and the chips should be soft inside, closer to a steak fry than to a McDonald’s fry. Americans expecting thin fries are always slightly startled.
How to order
Chip shops have their own vocabulary. “Cod and chips, open” means eat-in wrapping you can carry; “wrapped” means closed up to take home. “Salt and vinegar?” is not a question about preference so much as a ritual, and the correct answer is yes — malt vinegar, not the sharp white stuff.
The usual extras
- Mushy peas — marrowfat peas cooked to a thick green purée. Divisive, essential in the North.
- Curry sauce — thin, mild, faintly sweet, and nothing like Indian curry.
- Scraps or bits — loose fried batter, usually free if you ask.
- Pickled eggs and gherkins — sitting in jars on the counter, an acquired taste.
Where it came from
Fried fish was brought to Britain by Jewish immigrants from Portugal and Spain, and chips arrived separately from Belgium or France. Someone put the two together in the 1860s — both Joseph Malin in London’s East End and John Lees in Mossley, Lancashire, are claimed as the first, and the argument has never been settled. Cheap trawler fish and cheap potatoes made it the working-class meal of industrial Britain.
The newspaper question
Fish and chips really were once served wrapped in old newspaper, and people are nostalgic about it. It was banned in the 1980s because printing ink is not something you want on your dinner. Shops now use plain paper, sometimes printed to look like newspaper, which fools nobody but everyone appreciates the gesture.
Eating it properly
The correct way to eat fish and chips is standing up, outdoors, ideally within sight of the sea, from the paper, with a small wooden fork, while a seagull watches you with intent. It does not taste the same off a plate.