Food of the Cods
How Fish and Chips Made Britain
Daniel Gray
Having read it
★★★★☆
A decent bit of historical nuance balances the lyrical enjoyment of a subject close to the British heart and makes clear it’s certainly a wider one given the Belgian that started it, the Scots that appreciated it and the Italians that saw a good business opportunity as well as a few Cypriots giving it a go and even a Lancastrian!
With passages like this...
The bus groaned into the Pennine foothills. When particularly steep inclines were encountered, it made the noise of an irate vacuum cleaner. As we hurtled around tight country corners, I began to feel like a mail bag in the back of Postman Pat’s van on a morning when he’d had a furious row with Mrs Goggins or done a line of coke.
...it should at least entertain you with its regular portions of fish and chip appreciation and humour...
It is clear, then, that the national dish embodies the complexities and eccentricities of its population and their multi-faceted identities. And that we just really, really like frying stuff.
A good passage
I roamed onwards [continuing to see the many fish and chip shops of Blackpool] past Pablo’s, with its interactive ordering screens, and Fish Ahoy, another shop to boast ‘Traditional’ fish and chips. That word’s frequent use – and ditto the deployment of ‘Proper’ fish and chips – in this trade demonstrates what we customers need the dish to be: unchanging, trustworthy, habitual, never revamped. A visit to the chippy must be consistent and offer no surprises. Should some rogue fryer meddle by announcing ‘Thrice-cooked chips’, or that he now cooks in truffle oil, Albion would shake.
Towards the Pleasure Beach yet more specimens hovered into view. At Orange Fish, a staff member polished windows ferociously as if doing so might ward off the threat of ever having to use the dreaded words ‘Sorry Shut!’ There was a sign advertising that their fish and chips were Halal, something repeated in a number of windows here. It reflected another chapter of this dish’s rich immigration story: that many families of Middle Eastern and South Asian origin, both Muslim and non-Muslim, operate – and eat from – chippies. The Beachcomber offered fish and chips ‘From £2.99’, a throwback price echoed by a cherished throwback remark that an old lady made to me as she moved aside from Joe’s Cut Price Rock stand: ‘Eee, I make a better door than a window, don’t I love?’
Now the sun was drooping towards the Irish Sea and Blackpool had run out of fish and chip shops for me to ogle. That each one of the thirty or so I’d seen on this golden safari was different to the next made me quietly elated. Here were tiny republics in a homogenised world of chain stores and eateries. They dazzled in their individuality and idiosyncrasies, a vibrant miscellany. Imagine
sneering at that.
A second good passage
If there are few things more British than fish and chips (disregarding their origins and the nationalities of those who have often cooked them...), then queuing for fish and chips must buckle the scales of jingoism.