Where in London is the best (or really good) chip butty?
 

I will be in London on Saturday for a quick day trip and I have the notion in my head that I need to find the best (or really good) chip butty in London.

So, where can a common man find a damn tasty chip butty in London? (or are the best ones up in the Northwest?)

If I can't get a decent lead on one, I'll switch to Plan B which is dim sum in Chinatown.

The first hit on Google is a Tripadvisor review for Hashtag# Fish and Chips but I am very tempted to skip it based on their stupid name.

Recommended chippies are a bit thin the ground in London, but have a peek at Poppies...

http://poppiesfishandchips.co.uk/

You're about to find out that London's chippies are not a patch on the North West. The London ones have strange green liquid and fishy tasting pies with snake like contents.

You're probably better with a sandwich at Euston. :d

I'm glad you posted, Rubicund. Can you recommend a place up in your neck of the woods?

You know, I wouldn't mind an eel pie. I'll try anything once. I have Manze's written down so I can go there should my chip butty quest fail and I don't want dim sum.

I've never encountered a chip butty in London. Nor any chippies doing deep fried Mars Bars or offering gravy for your chips. I can't remember coming across any pouring curry sauce on them either - or selling hot pork pies.

I'm also struggling to think of any chippies offering green liquor: there's a clear distinction between chippies and eel & pie shops.

What IS relatively common is fresh fish properly fried in oil rather than that disgusting tallow so widely misused in the culinarily illiterate parts of Britain. If you're addicted to having a mouth full of congealing beef fat, though, the Fryers' Delight in Theobalds Rd will indulge that bizarre aspect of Northern masochism.

FWIW, my experience is that a decent chip butty has to be made at home. Buy the chips at a chippy, douse them in salt and vinegar, then wrap well.

Once they're home, you used to get out a loaf of medium sliced Mothers' Pride, though these days any standard own-label white Chorleywood process sliced bread will have to be used instead. Spread with lactic butter (because this IS a Northern treat), and pile the soggily vinegared, and now cooling, chips between two buttered slices.

For real gastronomes: add a touch of your local bottled brown sauce. In emergencies HP will do, but no own-label will. Health nuts will use own-label brown sliced bread, though I think that's girly.

flanner, I love everything about your post. I need to buy you a pint or three.

sparky, what sort of a place are you looking for? Fine dining or chippy?

Definitely not fine dining.

I take that to mean pub food or sit in chippy then? Here's a list, just google and have a look:

Top Brink Pub Todmorden
Fighting Cocks Italian, Cliviger near Burnley
Cellar restaurant Padiham
Barley Mow, Barley Village
Assheton Arms Downham
Sparrow Hawk, Fence
Bannister's Fish & Chip restaurant- Boundary Mill, Colne

Thanks!

Where are you close to sparky when you visit? I can recommend dependent on your location.

I live in Winsford and work in Birchwood.

I knew that, (no I'm not stalking you) but I live in the Pendle area of Lancashire. When you said "your neck of the woods", I assumed you meant Pendle, because you had business or had a reason to come up here.

If you're just looking for a day out and somewhere to eat, that's a different matter. As a Mancunian though, are you looking for somewhere in Manchester?

In general, I am on the hunt for "The Best" (or at least very good) various regional foods from across the country.

An incomplete list:

chip butty
Wigan slappy
scouse
eel pie (might look for this instead of chip butty on Saturday)
pork pie
steak pie
bubble and squeak
Eccles cake
etc.

Hit submit too soon.

If I can get really good versions in the area, I'll do that.

Sorry to intrude - but can someone explain what "brown sauce" is. I have read about this in some british mysteries but don't have a clue.

At first I though it was ketchup - but that is red, not brown - and then ketchup was mentioned as a separate item.

And also what is "beans on toast". Is this regular baked beans just put on toasted bread - rather than the franks and beans often served at picnics etc in the US? Or some sort of different legume?

As for what seems to be french fries on wonder bread - is that an actual thing? Or just a joke?

The older mysteries don;t seem to have so many mentions of these foods but I am seeing more and more in mysteries from the 70s on. Are these some sort of regional specialities (like people here who put cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches) or a modern but obscure take on older foods (like deep fried twinkies)

Brown sauce is HP sauce

Ketchup is red sauce

Beans on toast is baked beans on a slice of toast. The same baked beans you are referring to.

French fries on wonder bread is the chip butty. Well, a variation on it as the butty would be a roll with butter.

I should say brown sauce is HP sauce and other similar sauces.

if you really want try a regional "delight" head across to Middlesborough and track down a parmo

What is a parmo?

Eel pie and bubble and squeak are Southern dishes, not to be found in the North. However, you're in London on Saturday....

Scouse is just stew, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouse_(food)

Pork Pie differs across the country, so hard to find the "best". Our local farm shop make their own and they are lovely, http://www.roamingroosters.co.uk/farm-shop see their steak pies too.

Eccles cakes can be bought in Eccles of course, but the product is also sold in most supermarkets. The factory that used to be in Eccles is now in Manchester.
http://www.lancashireecclescakes.co.uk/index.php

I value my waistline too much to even chance a Wigan Slappy http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/wiganslappy.htm

BTW, on the chip butty theme, very few chippies in this area use beef dripping to fry their wares. It's mostly vegetable oil and most places have a notice up that confirms that. That makes it suitable for vegetarians who want chips and a cheese and onion pie, or Halal observers.

"French fries on wonder bread is the chip butty."

No. I understand that the American for Mothers Pride is "wonder bread". But chips are NEVER "French fries". In a butty, they're either shop-bought and vinegar-sodden, or thick slugs of spud straight from a domestic chip pan.

Home-made chip butties need white Chorleywood process sliced bread: Mothers Pride used to be the best-known brand, but it's now almost entirely sold as own label. Chip shops - and greasy spoon vans - selling chip butties usually use soft baps instead.

I've not knowingly encountered a chip butty south of Birmingham. As far as I'm aware, there simply weren't crime novels set in working class districts north of Brum until a couple of decades ago.

It's a more or less absolute rule of British fiction that allegedly "realistic" accounts of working-class life, even after the 1956 cultural revolution, show virtually zero knowledge of the life they affect to describe. Arnold Wesker, for example - the author of "Chips With Everything", which you'd have thought might at least have had some contact with chips - never once describes the food ordinary people eat.

But then he was a southerner. At least originally, a Communist. And latterly a Knight.

I want flanner to make me a proper chip butty. I'll bring thre beer!

A colleague texted a friend and he suggested the "Rock and Sole Plaice" on Endell Street.

The name is brilliant.

No sir, not beer, a steaming mug of tea!

<<Beans on toast is baked beans on a slice of toast. The same baked beans you are referring to.>>
It is likely that nytraveler is referring to Boston baked beans or similar and not your typical Heinz or own label baked beans.

Over here I sometimes buy imported Heinz beans as I'm not fond of the overly molasses sweetened varieties with added pork fat. :/

And don't forget the non-brewed condiment (don't ask).

PS: Brown sauce is a sweet/sour sauce, but not tomato ketchup.
http://www.lovefood.com/journal/opin...it-brown-sauce

Rock and Sole Plaice is much better than Poppies in my opinion and you can make your own chip butty.

I love the name so it's definitely making the shortlist.

Daddies brown sauce is as good or better than HP. We have a great UK section at our commissary. I wanted Suffolk sticky pickle and my husband brought home Branston. I am so happy they are not using beef lard to cook fish. Yuck. Also I don't think the Brits cook their chips long enough. You all still do a great Victoria sponge.

I have never seen a chip butty served in a "chippy" I am based in the Midlands, I have certainly eaten them but I always provide my own bread......

Smeagol, most chippies in the North West serve a chip butty. Mostly on a:

"barm cake" in Manchester
"bap" in other areas
"teacake" elsewhere
"bun" elsewhere again
"oven bottom" still other places

Always buttered with a generous scoop of chips in the middle. A teacake when I was a lad was always a bun with currants in it. If you're in places like Yorkshire, you have to ask for a "currant teacake". Not recommended with chips!

Isn't s currant teacake basically an Eccles cake?

Nothing like each other Sparky. An Eccles cake is flaky pastry and a currant teacake is a sweet bread like texture with a few currants in it. Get thee to a supermarket.

Yessir! err, ma'am, err OK!

Rbicund, it must definetly be a "northern thing" although contrary on what Flanner said we can most certainly get curry sauce for the chips at our chippy !

BTW, if we're on cakes and the like, let's not forget Welsh cakes, bannocks and girdle scones.

St Clements Cake, yum. I saw a story on the travel channel and they ate a chip sandwich. I like bread and I like chips but not together.
I like brown sauce on my chips.