Food of the Gods

I'm having withdrawal symptoms. I've not had fish and chips for over a year. It's not that they're difficult to find, it's just that I'm picky when it comes to fish'n chips [to give them their real name].

There is, just down the road in Belsize Park, a chippy which is one of the best in London... apparently. Not good enough. It's not the quality of the fish [doubtless, it's fine] it's the fact that they fry them in oil.

Real, northern, fish'n chips are fried in beef dripping [fat]. Also, real northern chippies do not sell shite like sausages, saveloy's, "southern" fried chicken etc, etc which, here in London, tends to be fried in the same oil as the fish'n chips thus rendering everything with the same oily chickeny / sausagy / fishy taste. Not being in the north, I don't expect to find a chippy cooking in anything other then oil.

David sells fish'n chips in the pub [cooked in oil], and the silly tourists love them. Fish'n chips they are, real fish'n chips they are not. Also following the faux British tradition, they are served with mushy peas and a wedge of lemon.

Fish'n chips do not come with mushy peas. Another urban myth concerns newspaper. Yes, it's true that fish'n chips were at one time wrapped in newspaper. Not directly in newspaper. Beneath the fish'n chips was a layer of greaseproof paper, then a sheet of plain paper and finally, the newspaper.

False: the fish'n chips were never placed directly onto the newspaper [and what is this shit with wedges of lime?].

True: they had a sheet of greaseproof paper and plain paper wrapped around them.