The UK s 50 best fish and chip shops (and what it takes to make the list)
Fish and chips have surged in popularity during the pandemic, but these are the places to find the best in Britain
Matt and Ashley Phillips bought Shap Chippy in 2018 and found great success
Credit: Chris Watt Photography
“There’s a lot more to great fish and chips than Joe Public probably imagines,” says Matt Phillips, owner of Shap Chippy in Shap, Cumbria. “The ratio of water to batter, what temperature you fry it at, how long you cook your fish for, the process of cooking the chips. You can go into five shops which use the same batter but they could produce a very different product.”
HEEDRUM-HODRUM THE recent tartan days in Canada and the USA put me in mind of terms for Scottish traditions. I landed on heedrum-hodrum, though Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines this as: “a derogatory term for Highland music”. Its appearance in the DSL dates from 1988 in Raymond Vettese’s collection The Richt Noise and Ither poems: “the spreit that lowps whaun it meets the swecht o oor true past, and greets no oot o seep-sappin heedrum-hodrum but oot o whit we were .”. However, it is not always used in a derogatory sense – as shown in The Times of August 1996: “Once in the Oyster Bar of the Cafe Royal in Edinburgh he used the traditional method of ‘mouth music’ to illustrate his pibroch . it was an incomprehensible ‘heederum-hoderum’ but they could not have known that the distinguished-looking kilted and bearded scholar was giving a demonstration of an art form which stretches far back into history”.
Annan fish and chip shop named as one of the best in Britain
The Cafe Royal has been listed in the top 50 takeaways by trade publication Fry Magazine
John Pagani from The Cafe Royal in Annan. (Image: Jim McEwan)
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Gerard Richardson I HAD the rare pleasure of tasting Glenfiddich s Grand Series of Malts last week so I apologise in advance for this week s trip into fantasy land. Oh to be rich. I ve been writing about drinks for years now so it takes a very special product to stop me in my tracks. If I m lucky it’s once a year. Last week it happened three times in a row and I predict the memory will linger for years to come. The range includes a 21 year old finished in Caribbean rum casks, a 23 year old finished in French oak and the Grand Couronne 26 year old finished in Cognac casks and the samples were paired with a selection of handmade macarons from the Cafe Royal which turned out to be a stroke of decadent genius to be honest.
The UK s 50 best fish and chip shops (and what it takes to make the list) telegraph.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from telegraph.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.