Price of Fish & Chips - How Much?!?

[The Gauge]

vikingaero said:

so I drove 40 minutes to Snake Pass..... I looked at the map and decided to head to Skegness across country. It was a nice ambling 3 hour trip and I went to The Trawlers Catch for a large cod, chips and a pot of gravy for £8.95.

Snake Pass to Skegness is no easy drive, even for fish n chips.

[anonymous-user]

Bullett said:

Do I win a prize?

Ok, it was at the Hinds head in Bray (Heston's pub) came with about 4 different 'condiments' Curry sauce, Tarte sauce, minted peas, ketchup etc. and was delicious and huge but £29! That was for the lad.

Wife and I had a whole Brill, sides (chips) and that was £60.

We had starters and deserts as well.

And booze.

It was a bit more than the local chippy.

Were you served by this man?



I once flew from Heathrow airport at Terminal 2 and being a fussy eater the only place I could eat was Heston "The Perfectionists Cafe" so I decided to have fish and chips there. I had fish and chips at my parents local the night before, but reading the description as I waited to be seated this was going to be amazing.

I seem to remember fish and chips was £21 so it might have been £30 by the time a coke and service charge was added.

It was utter st, honestly it was like they have put a birds eye frozen fish and chips in the oven and served that. For some reason they felt the need to put the vinegar in a little spray bottle and make a big song and dance about how wonderful and clever they were.

Professor Brian Cox was on the other table, I didn't ask him what he thought of it. It made the fish and chips I had the previous night at my parent's local seem like it was cooked in a Michelin Star restaurant.

[theplayingmantis]

Joey Deacon said:

Bullett said:

Do I win a prize?

Ok, it was at the Hinds head in Bray (Heston's pub) came with about 4 different 'condiments' Curry sauce, Tarte sauce, minted peas, ketchup etc. and was delicious and huge but £29! That was for the lad.

Wife and I had a whole Brill, sides (chips) and that was £60.

We had starters and deserts as well.

And booze.

It was a bit more than the local chippy.

Were you served by this man?



I once flew from Heathrow airport at Terminal 2 and being a fussy eater the only place I could eat was Heston "The Perfectionists Cafe" so I decided to have fish and chips there. I had fish and chips at my parents local the night before, but reading the description as I waited to be seated this was going to be amazing.

I seem to remember fish and chips was £21 so it might have been £30 by the time a coke and service charge was added.

It was utter st, honestly it was like they have put a birds eye frozen fish and chips in the oven and served that. For some reason they felt the need to put the vinegar in a little spray bottle and make a big song and dance about how wonderful and clever they were.

Professor Brian Cox was on the other table, I didn't ask him what he thought of it. It made the fish and chips I had the previous night at my parent's local seem like it was cooked in a Michelin Star restaurant.

'Heathrow'

What do you expect.

All airport food is pretty crap, any with a celeb chef name even worse.

[MattsCar]

Always makes me laugh on Facebook to see the hard of thinking getting angry with local chip shops due to the cost/ increase of prices and personally attacking them like they are somehow deliberately profiteering. "Rip off mate"/ "Used to only be £5" etc

It is what it is. If you want fish and chips, you pay for it, or buy the ingredients yourself and do it home and realise that the cost of the ingredients are not far off what you are actually paying at the chip shop.

I don't mind paying the prices. However, what I do mind is paying the price and getting badly cooked garbage, which is all too common these days. Examples being Fish that is soaked in grease to the point of it literally dripping out if you squeeze it, raw chips, or chips that when unwrapped are so soggy, they have turned into a ball and you have to literally peel them off each other.

If I am feeling lucky, i.e 50/50 of getting a good portion, i pass 3 fish and chip shops before i get to the one i want. If i want a guaranteed decent meal, it is an 8 mile drive, with about 7 shops being closer.

[sean ie3]

I used to travel for good fish and chips, from Taunton town to Norton Fitzwarren and the 'Golden Chip', tasty curry sauce as well, about 5 or 6 quid at the time.

Edited by sean ie3 on Sunday 24th September 21:33

[vikingaero]

seyre1972 said:

vikingaero said:

You're like me. Whenever I drop one of The Vikingettes Ooop Nurf for University, I sometimes stay overnight, and pick up things on the way down from Facebook Marketplace or visit places.

I took the day off on Friday 14th, left Kent at 4:30am, and a nice traffic free run up to Manchester by 8;30am sticking to the speed limit. Moved her in to her new student flatshare, and took her to Sainsburys for a shop.£280 later the car was full again.D Luckily I had a £100 gift voucher from work for being the dogs, so that took the sting out of it. Once we moved the food in, her flatmates started to arrive, so I said my goodbye.

The problem was that I would either hit Heathrow or Dartford by 4-5pm, so I drove 40 minutes to Snake Pass, got my Jetboil out and heated up a Wayfarers breakfast which I ate out of the pouch. Afterwards I walked up to the Over Exposed crash site and the stones. I was expecting a 2 hour round trip, but was far quicker on my tod. So I looked at the map and decided to head to Skegness across country. It was a nice ambling 3 hour trip and I went to The Trawlers Catch for a large cod, chips and a pot of gravy for £8.95. Much cheaper than Kent which would be around £14.

Bloody hell - is that a terms worth of food ? Think ours was £80 ish (no booze). However did already have 2 large bags for life already in the car full of cooking essentials (herbs/oil/household cleaning materials etc) so suppose that kept the cost down on the day.

Vikingette 2 knows how to rinse me and being my littlest she gets away with it. Fundamentally she's lazy, so will get me to buy the bulk stuff than carry it herself (oat milk, almond milk, cartons of passata, rice etc etc)

The Gauge said:

vikingaero said:

so I drove 40 minutes to Snake Pass..... I looked at the map and decided to head to Skegness across country. It was a nice ambling 3 hour trip and I went to The Trawlers Catch for a large cod, chips and a pot of gravy for £8.95.

Snake Pass to Skegness is no easy drive, even for fish n chips.

Kent to Manchester is c.240 miles each way, so 480ish. I think I did around 560-580 miles that day and drove mainly on the A57/A158 to Skeggy. It was a nice relaxing drive at around 50mph and that meant that I even used less fuel on the longer trip home than blasting straight down the motorway.

Edit to say: It was a bloody lovely fish and chips. I regret not ordering a plain jumbo sausage as an accompaniment.

Edited by vikingaero on Monday 25th September 14:33

[theplayingmantis]

MattsCar said:

or chips that when unwrapped are so soggy, they have turned into a ball and you have to literally peel them off each other.

.

thats perfect chip shops chips for me!

[otolith]

Grimsby chippy claims Britain's cheapest fish supper

[CKY]

otolith said:

Grimsby chippy claims Britain's cheapest fish supper

£3 for Haddock & Chips?! Someone needs to get there and do some road testing ASAP.

[Patio]

CKY said:

otolith said:

Grimsby chippy claims Britain's cheapest fish supper

£3 for Haddock & Chips?! Someone needs to get there and do some road testing ASAP.

It's got to be grim for that surely?

I'm thinking vietnams finest farmed basa and and undercooked chips

[FredericRobinson]

Patio said:

It's got to be grim for that surely?

I'm thinking vietnams finest farmed basa and and undercooked chips

If there’s one place in the country you won’t get away with labelling basa as haddock it’s Grimsby

[Chipstick]

sean ie3 said:

I used to travel for good fish and chips, from Taunton town to Norton Fitzwarren and the 'Golden Chip', tasty curry sauce as well, about 5 or 6 quid at the time.

Easy fella going from Taunton all the way out to a suburb on the outskirts of Taunton

[pocketspring]

CKY said:

otolith said:

Grimsby chippy claims Britain's cheapest fish supper

£3 for Haddock & Chips?! Someone needs to get there and do some road testing ASAP.

"Alright gang! It's me, back on the road!"

[trickywoo]

otolith said:

Grimsby chippy claims Britain's cheapest fish supper

5 chips and a goujon.

[anonymous-user]

MattsCar said:

If I am feeling lucky, i.e 50/50 of getting a good portion, i pass 3 fish and chip shops before i get to the one i want. If i want a guaranteed decent meal, it is an 8 mile drive, with about 7 shops being closer.

Considering it is just a piece of fish in batter and some chips fried in oil it is amazing how difficult it is to find a decent fish and chip shop. So difficult in fact, that when you do manage to find a decent one you are prepared to travel.

I would say I have been to less than 10 Fish and Chip shops in my life that are amazing, and luckily our local is one of those. We rarely have fish and chips these days, but when we do we now sit in the restaurant as it just tastes better than taking it home. I don't know why as it is exactly the same food, but it seems the ten minute journey home wrapped in paper makes it lose something.

[FiF]

Joey Deacon said:

MattsCar said:

If I am feeling lucky, i.e 50/50 of getting a good portion, i pass 3 fish and chip shops before i get to the one i want. If i want a guaranteed decent meal, it is an 8 mile drive, with about 7 shops being closer.

Considering it is just a piece of fish in batter and some chips fried in oil it is amazing how difficult it is to find a decent fish and chip shop. So difficult in fact, that when you do manage to find a decent one you are prepared to travel.

I would say I have been to less than 10 Fish and Chip shops in my life that are amazing, and luckily our local is one of those. We rarely have fish and chips these days, but when we do we now sit in the restaurant as it just tastes better than taking it home. I don't know why as it is exactly the same food, but it seems the ten minute journey home wrapped in paper makes it lose something.

A lot depends how it is wrapped, but certainly fish wrapped up in one package in direct contact with the chips suffers from any steam. I've always thought that eating on the spot is why they always seem better at the coast.

At home we tend to put them in a warm oven for a few minutes, seems to crisp them up even though the time and temperature isn't sufficient to do anything significant in terms of cooking, say 140C for 5-10 mins spread out on baking trays, one for fish, one for chips.

Having said all that agree it's amazing how some places manage to make such a mess of it. One shop in our town was always pretty good, new owners took over, shaky start but within a month had improved beyond the previous owners. They've now sold up and moved on, new lot, well we've changed to a different shop, putting up with the slightly longer journey but massively more difficult parking.

[dickymint]

As regards the discussion early about Rick Stein's this popped up on my laptop................



Enjoyed watching it and seems quite honest and amusing. Worth reading the comments - this one stood out...............

"I went for an interview in this fish and chip shop in summer 2018. There isn't anything different to a normal shop minus the scale. The chips are made off site, at Stein owned suppliers, and bought in frozen. In summer the place is queuing out the door all day and you're paid minimum wage so no wonder some of the comments mention staffing - they're rushed off their feet doing 12 hour shifts!"

which got a reply from a guy that has actually delivered them........

"I delivered his chips that year and you are correct. They were made off site just up the road at one of his production facilities. But rather than freezing them they were instead vacuum packed for the short trip to the chippy. Definitely not frozen."

Edit: I forgot to say the video review is bang up to date as in two weeks ago.

[Countdown]

Slightly O/T - does anybody know of a decent chippy in the Northern Quarter / Piccadilly Gardens / Ancoats area of Manchester?

The Kingfisher on Tib Street used to be my "go to" place but that went downhill after a change of ownership and now they seemed to have closed up permanently

Thanks in advance

[theplayingmantis]

dickymint said:

As regards the discussion early about Rick Stein's this popped up on my laptop................



Enjoyed watching it and seems quite honest and amusing. Worth reading the comments - this one stood out...............

"I went for an interview in this fish and chip shop in summer 2018. There isn't anything different to a normal shop minus the scale. The chips are made off site, at Stein owned suppliers, and bought in frozen. In summer the place is queuing out the door all day and you're paid minimum wage so no wonder some of the comments mention staffing - they're rushed off their feet doing 12 hour shifts!"

which got a reply from a guy that has actually delivered them........

"I delivered his chips that year and you are correct. They were made off site just up the road at one of his production facilities. But rather than freezing them they were instead vacuum packed for the short trip to the chippy. Definitely not frozen."

Edit: I forgot to say the video review is bang up to date as in two weeks ago.

i said they were not frozen, just evidences how much people lie, and feel the need to lie, both on a publicly available film (which is even odder) and the walter mittys on here.

i can perhaps understand why those of low self esteem may lie on here about certain aspects of their life, like the famous chap whose fictitious garage was called out amongst all the 'gushing fools', legendary thread believe maybe?

but why lie about f&c ffs! what do people get out of that! i guess the denigrating of a 'celeb' perhaps? eg those saying his nasty chips are frozen and the bloke who claimed they were charging 50 quid or whatever amount he made up...like the crab sandwich price on another thread on here...i dont get it!

[Swervin_Mervin]

Our local chippy is now open 4 nights for the first time in a long time (Wed-Sat) and even now has a card machine!

Not sure if it's under new ownership but the guy that cooked last Fri wasn't the owner. Standard remains very high still thankfully. And no off-site chip prep - they still use the old drum peeler, soak the spuds in a barrel, and chip on site