Would you pay £15 for fish and chips? The most expensive seaside chippies revealed
Summer sounds like the crunch of golden batter, and the scrunch of slightly soggy paper. It smells of Sarson’s malt vinegar and tastes of salt licked from oily fingers. It has been this way for a century. Because fish and chips is the definitive British summer dish. But for how much longer?
Chef Tom Kerridge, whose Hand & Flowers pub in Marlow holds two Michelin stars, is selling a fried piece of brill with chips and sauces for £52 (or a modest £37 for the catch of the day) – read our review of this below. Admittedly, his chippy is inside Harrods food hall but this May the Office for National Statistics calculated that prices right across the country had risen faster than for any other fast food or takeaway dish. The average portion is now £9.87, up seven per cent on the £9.17 we forked out last year, and as prices rise, the chippy’s future looks choppy. In 1927 there were 35,000 across the country. Now, 10,500 remain and Sarson’s warns that half face closure by 2025. So why is one of the nation’s favourite suppers no longer cheap as – well – chips?
“I’ve been in this for 25 years, and times are definitely challenging now,” says Andrew Crook, owner of award-winning chippy Skippers of Euxton in Lancashire. If Kerridge’s outlet is an exercise in Marie Antoinette-ish make-believe, Crook’s is the real deal. Owned by his parents before him, it serves the local community with a finger-licking haddock and chips for £9.05. While some chippies may be gastro- and gentrifying (the way your local pub went in the 1990s) that is not the reason behind the overarching price hikes we’re seeing currently, he suggests. Instead, chippies are facing a perfect storm of costs.
The wettest 18 months since 1836 have worsened an ongoing “spudflation”. “I’ll use a third of a tonne of chips today,” says Crook, who is also president of the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF). “At the moment, mine are twice their normal price. That’s a massive cost.” The big fast-food chains buy in bulk to absorb these rises, but the majority of fish and chips are still family owned, so cannot. As a result: “Wetherspoons sell more fish and frozen fries than anybody else now,” says Crook.
Ready meals now rival the chippy for convenience, and can – since they are a VAT-free product – beat them on price. Customer habits have changed too. Where a Friday stroll to the chippy was once sacrosanct, now we are loath to leave the sofa, and delivery aggregators like Deliveroo can charge a whopping 30 per cent commission from restaurants.
Nor are chippies battling only on the home front. Half the world’s sunflower oil comes from Ukraine. Before the invasion, Russian-caught fish made up around 50 per cent of the whitefish consumed in the UK, and Russian gas pipelines were Europe’s biggest single source of imported gas. “There’s no real way of offsetting these costs,” says Eric Snaith, owner of award-winning Eric’s Fish & Chips in North Norfolk. He explains that, for the past two years, “the price we’d have to charge for a large cod was so out of kilter, we decided to take it off the menu” although smaller fillets are still available. Read our review of Eric’s Fish & Chips below.
This February, Russia pulled out of a 1956 deal allowing British boats to fish the Barents Sea, saying Britons should “lose weight and get smarter”. It was a double blow, because health is one of two modern concerns hitting the chippy where it hurts. According to the NFFF, the average serving weighs in at 998 calories – significantly less than a Big Mac Combo Meal with medium Coke and fries (at 1,120 calories), but a lot more than the recommended 600 for an adult meal. Then there’s sustainability. 62 per cent of the fish that chippies sell is cod, which conservationists suggest we should swap for more sustainable, but also less popular, hake.
Yet despite all these pressures, our appetite for fish and chips remains hearty. The UK spends £1.2 billion on them annually, 22 per cent of us visiting the chippy weekly. Many of these beloved local landmarks are adjusting creatively. The NFFF Perfect Portion initiative is promoting portion control, and Skippers has Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Certification, meaning all its fish is traceable and sustainable. Eric’s only uses fish from MSC-certified suppliers, uses trimmings for new dishes like thin strips of crispy chilli cod and even experimented with transporting potatoes by sailboat, to cut its carbon footprint. All this means that a takeaway “light lunch” of small haddock and chips with homemade lemonade or tea is still only £6.50 to take away, or £7 to eat in.
Not everyone is coping so well, however. “Over the next five years, the smaller terrace shops are going to find it very hard to manage those costs while trying to still sell cheaply,” says Crook. “The owners are coming up for retirement, the kids don’t want to take it on.” We will still have fish and chips, he suggests. We may even eat it in the same quantities. Upmarket outlets will stay afloat. The bigger chains too. But if the local, independent chippy falls on its fork, we will have lost an institution that is fried into our national history, and our communities, Crook says: “We care about our customers, we go to their funerals, check up on them, look after them when they’re down on their luck. So if you can, get out and support your local fish and chip shop.” You’ll miss it when the salty smell of summer fades away.
Splurge on: Kerridge’s Fish & Chips
Location
Harrods Food Hall, Knightsbridge, London
Dish
‘Deep fried Cornish brill coated in Kerridge’s gluten-free batter, and served with chips, Matson curry sauce, tartare sauce and pease pudding’
Price
£52 (plus £4.95 for a small sparkling water)
Verdict
The vinegar is malt, the curry sauce inspired by Kerridge’s childhood local. But this chippy has had its soul sanitised. A lemon is decorously wrapped in muslin and positioned on pretty white, blue and gold-rimmed porcelain. Nine chips (deliciously triple cooked) protrude from a ramekin like orchids in a vase, uniformly elegant in shape. The fish is of the highest pedigree – ethically caught and hand-selected by Cornish fishmongers. Its batter is gluten-free (of course) and crisp, but lies like a weighted blanket over a fashionably slim body. At the end, we are each handed a foil-wrapped wet wipe. But we have had no opportunity to get our fingers oily.
Save on: Eric’s Fish & Chips
Location
Drove Orchards, Thornham, Norfolk
Dish
‘Take-away light lunch deal’ of small haddock deep fried in beer batter, small chips cooked in beef dripping and homemade lemonade’
Price
£6.50 to take away including lemonade or tea (£7 to eat in)
Verdict
A beautifully moist and flaky fillet of haddock is covered in batter so light it puffs into volcanic bubbles, beside a bucket-load of golden chips and those all-important golden shards you have to fish from the bottom of your cardboard box. A lemon wedge, as many sachets of salt and vinegar as you can grab, and an ice-cold, sweet and sharp cloudy homemade lemonade completes the meal. Unimprovable, except by a giant pot of Eric’s mushy peas which, at an extra £2.45, easily stretches between the three of us. Fresh garden green in colour, creamy in texture with whole peas submerged in it. Divine.