Be Excellent To Each Other

I always put sauce on the side, otherwise you can't change your mind as you eat about the correct amount of sauce for each mouthful.

I agree

Is it weird that I read this and heard Charles Boyle from the Nine-Nine saying it?

Do the beans go on the side, that's the important question. Because otherwise you're jizzing bean juice all over your fish and everything everywhere is ruined.

Ever since I grew manly facial hair (long before it became fashionable), I've avoided beans entirely. Just too risky.

Ketchup goes at the side of the chips. Gravy (thick is best) can be go over the chips, spread out over a couple of passes of the jug/pot

I'm going to take that as a complement.

Or possibly, condiment?

As you should.

//edit: Although Zeppo says he heard it in the voice of Moss from the IT Crowd.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

I'm not entirely convinced I would.

Just because you tasted chips with gravy?

Who'd have thought it.

I've just realised that scallops are not on the list.

I like one from time to time.

Potato scallops, that is, in case anyone was wondering.

Peripherally, an old school friend of mine went to London to study ophthalmic optics in 1972 and was appalled to find that meat and potato pies were not available from chippies in the metrolopiss.

I wonder if this situation has been rectified. Can anyone advise?

They were in the 80s. I guess it depends on which chip shops you visit.

When I moved up north to Uni I started to see 'butter pies' on the menus. I think someone said it was potatoes and butter in a pie, but I may misremember that.

Never heard of potato scallops before. At what point does a Potato Scallop becomes a fishcake, and vice versa?

Also, I saw Bik backing fish and chip butties earlier in the thread. Not tried that myself, but I have long been fond of a Wigan Kebab, a pie butty.

Fishcake has fish in, potato scallop is just a flat chunk of spud battered and fried.

intriguing. Is it a northern thing? I'm from the north but can't recall it. Anyway, it's put me in mind to go to the supermarket and buy Alphabites this weekend. Which led me to discover something called Mashtags.

End of days

Apparently they're a central England thing, according to wikipedia.

They're most tasty.

They sell them in the Sainsburys at the end of my road in SW London, they just don't call them scallops. (I heard them called scallops growing up in Wales, though not often.)

I've heard of them as 'scalloped potatoes'

There's an old ditty about some guy eating fish and scallops, one dropped down his trousers and burnt him on the leg.

I think they were quite popular in the 60s according to mum. They don't do them in any of the chippys around here so I guess they just fell out of favour.

Battered, deep fried spud? What's not to like?

Does anyone know what klondikes are? I thought they were pretty common until I mentioned them to the wife who'd never heard of them.

No idea.

The chippy in Buxton has a bowl of vinegar with bits of chopped onion floating in it. Weirdos.

Not a clue. PD card game?

The Baths Supper Bar in Chorlton-cum-Hardy sells them and I used to get them from a chippy in Rusholme about 50 years ago, but I wouldn't think of Manchester as central England. I know they used to sell them somewhere in a South Lancashire town, possibly Wigan, about 20 years ago as a lad that came to work in the same office as me, in Salford, around that time went to get some from chippy near work, but he asked for 'smack and chips' as smack was his local name for them, but I've never heard them called that anywhere else and they didn't do them under either name.

I've heard battered slices of potato called '
Potato fritters' and were sold in the local chip shop in Lancaster when I was at uni, but I've also heard them called that by my grandmother, who'd make her own and was born and lived in London all her life.

They're fritters in Scotland, though I don't think they're that common. A roll with a fritter in it was a bit of a delicacy when I was growing up but I don't remember seeing them as an option outside Stewarton so they could've been specific to my local area.

They sold them in the Midlands while I was growing up there. They were magnificent. You know how the smell of fish and chips is basically a mix of batter, more oil, salt and vinegar? And how sometimes the taste of the chips is not quite as good as the smell. Scallops taste like the smell, and they are glorious.

Not had one for over a decade, mind.

I thought a scallop was a shellfish

I think the name refers to the shape. Like baguette

So good.

I know this'll further cement my rep as an utter ponce (entirely correct of course), but fish and chips should be eaten immediately, direct from the paper, with copious salt and chip shop vinegar, no condiments, and a super chilled, bone dry Moët. Preferably 04 Black Label, but hey, NV will suffice.

That sounds difficult to arrange. Do you take the Moet to the chippy and eat in your car, then?

As long as it is not on the beach....

From my experience, they're pretty common.

Are they maybe an Ayrshire thing? Or have you seen them elsewhere as well?

Ah, good point. Never really been to a chippy anywhere else though, so I wouldn't know.
If they are only Ayrshire, then the rest of Scotland is missing out.

And drive home drunk?

Heh. No.

Until very recently, Teen Angel #2 lived very close to fave chippy, so her hubby used to bob out and get the fish and chips whilst we all sat and had a glass of fizz.

One glass will suffice, no need to do the whole bottle yourself

I can't imagine drinking anything but ice cold coke with fish and chips but fair play.

Hmm. We don't appear to have a 'raised eyebrow' smiley.

Yeah, fair point. Who am I kidding, right?
/glug

Really fancy some potato scallops now.

Fritters in general are definitely not just an Ayrshire thing, but the fritter roll less commonly makes it out of Glasgow and the west in my experience. When - in the long distant past - a chip shop opened up near my secondary school (also in Ayrshire), I remember virtually the entire school going there every lunch time for said delicacy. In my case for 4 or 5 of them. With cheese in the rolls on top of the fritters. And all tomato sauce on.

Given that and the other excesses of my youthful diet, it's a wonder I'm not 20 stone, or entirely dead.

Welcome back, Stephen.

Fritter roll and curry sauce I can't eat them anymore because of all the gluten I might just have one anyway, they are so good.

What symptoms do you get if you accidentally eat it?

Death.