Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: bobb on 15 November, 2017, 08:34:57 pm
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Are there any left near you? They've all gone here.
I could talk at length about the ones I used to nip into for a quick fry up before catching the train to work, but what about you? Are there any still going? Or are they all gone?
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The regular coffee stop on the Sunday morning club ride has for some years been the Adelaide Farm café, which is a legendary local bikers' hang-out (hairy leather-clad type rather than skinny lycra-clad type). It's pretty grotty to look at and the toilets are nearly always out of order, but they do a great bacon sandwich and milky coffee. It recently shut down permanently because the site has been sold for redevelopment.
Boo!
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Hunmanby Gap at the other end of Filey Bay to Filey has a cafe made out of a Portakabin (the first choice of the greasy spoon) with wooden decking all around and a view over the sea. There is nothing else there bar the sand the sea and the sky and about six holiday cottages. The full English costs £5 and is ace. Dog friendly too.
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One of my favourites, when I lived in Loughborough, was Mario's. A quick Google tells me it is now a ponce bar.
It used to be a full on fry up with a can of lager, a game of Pool with a few pennies in the juke box - playing proper 7" records.
Now it would appear it's a load of pretentious balls....
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There's quite a few around here – a lot of lorry traffic from the M25 and sitting in a big mobile chair all days needs all the calories God can spare. Plus it's Surrey and no one really wants to acknowledge the current decade, they want to beat the future back with rolled up copies of the Daily Mail.
It always delights me in a childish way to order the 'number 2' breakfast at the one down the road (it's on the A22 opposite the Dildo Proving Grounds). With an extra hash brown. The toast is white and fat as your mum, and the tea comes in a proper mug. It's served by eastern Europeans, of course, but let's not talk about that. All the other food comes with chips, which is right and proper. It's probably a bit clean for a greasy spoon, but hey, they have some kind of rules these days about not keeping sausages around long enough for them to become sentient.
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I like a nice cooked breakfast, especially when I'm not doing the cooking :D
Most of the places I go to are far too clean to be called "greasy spoons" , but I'll give an honorable mention to the Madeira Cafe in Brighton, where I've finished a few FNRTTCs and the DoubleSix cafe around the side of Euston station which is good for a quick grease injection if you are getting off an early train. Ottys Cafe used to cater to Liverpool uni staff & students when I moved to my current flat, but is now a middle eastern/kebab place. They do a full english with beef sausages & turkey bacon.....
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I have not used cafes local to me in Burnt Oak recently (though EgoManiac has). I think there probably are some round here.
Looking at Street View, Munchy's, Hard Work and Captain's Cabin might fit the bill.
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You can get a very acceptable fry-up in the café next to Bishop Auckland Station. It’s another one that’s too clean to be a proper greasy spoon. They do a good fried egg on toast.
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The Regency near London Victoria fits the description.
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Paulo's on the Uxbridge Road is one of the best traditional working men's cafes I know.
However they do serve wholemeal bread (on request) and have a coffee machine rather than instant.
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There used to be a great sit down fish and chip shop at the top of Mount Pleasant, by the traffic lights.
The waitress was about 132 years old and wore gold lamé shoes. She always said "the haddock was a bit large" if you ordered it.
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The red bus on the A64 between leeds and the A1.
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D's Diner in Hatfield Peverel fits the bill, I think, and Mo's cafe in Tiptree.
Surprised there are no equivalents left in Chelmo though. :'(
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The red bus on the A64 between leeds and the A1.
Is that still open it was all closed up when I stopped there this summer?
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The red bus on the A64 between leeds and the A1.
Is that still open it was all closed up when I stopped there this summer?
Dunno tbh - I haven't ridden the road for a while.
It has been there so long it is amazing it hasn't collapsed in a pile of rust years ago.
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Talking of "too clean to be a greasy spoon", I remember stopping at a 1930s-looking place somewhere west of Heathrow on the A4 back in about 1995. Lots of HGVs outside. I had a cup of tea and whatever, but I remember the tea because the mug had a big stain of axle grease. As I was a biker (leather variety, not particularly long hair though), I drank it anyway.
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They all seem pretty clean these days and toilets are a lot better than using the car park around the side. I'm not complaining. I'd rather suffer from nostalgia than dysentery.
What are the precise criteria for a greasy spoon these days? I'd go with
1. Menu must have numbered (or occasionally named) breakfasts. With one substitution allowed.
2. Tea should be in white mugs with a proper square teabag floating in it.
3. They should give you an appropriate look if you ask for semi-skimmed milk.
4. Everything should come with chips (except the chip-free breakfast selections to which you can add chips).
5. Toast should arrive looking like someone did a bad job of miniaturizing a mattress.
6. HP sauce. No pretenders.
7. It should be closed by 3pm.
8. They should have a daily special which should occasionally be liver and onions and unaccountably chicken chasseur. With chips.
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8. They should have a daily special which should occasionally be liver and onions and unaccountably chicken chasseur. With chips.
Except Thursday, which is always Curry Day. And it has to be generic 'curry' (raisins optional), none of your dopiaza or jalfrezi nonsense. And it has to be served with rice and chips. And white sliced bread on the side.
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Yes, and I forgot.
9. Two slices of (white) bread and butter with everything. Even the jacket potato.
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They all seem pretty clean these days and toilets are a lot better than using the car park around the side. I'm not complaining. I'd rather suffer from nostalgia than dysentery.
What the precise criteria for a greasy spoon these days? I'd go with
1. Menu must have numbered (or occasionally named) breakfasts. With one substitution allowed.
2. Tea should be in white mugs with a proper square teabag floating in it.
3. They should give you an appropriate look if you ask for semi-skimmed milk.
4. Everything should come with chips (except the chip-free breakfast selections to which you can add chips).
5. Toast should arrive looking like someone did a bad job of miniaturizing a mattress.
6. HP sauce. No pretenders.
7. It should be closed by 3pm.
8. They should have a daily special which should occasionally be liver and onions and unaccountably chicken chasseur. With chips.
9. Margarine on bread , not butter. It's easier to spread and cheaper.
ref. closing at 3p.m.That would rule out a lot of truckstops , which fit all the other requirements , as many of them stay open 24/7 .
I can think of Stibbington Diner ,Colsterworth truck stop and Markham Moor truckstop on the A1 .
The most nostalgic one is on the southbound A1 near Newark.It is literally an old wooden hut, with a verandah.
The food is crap so I have only stopped there once but there are often a few wagons parked outside so it is still in business.
I think that Rosie's near Gainsborough would fit all of the above though.
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There is a superb cafe used as the first control on the 3 Coasts just outside Castleford, Busy Lizzies. Huge egg and bacon bap for £2 IIRC, mugs of tea for << £1. Not had the full English but many who did.
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
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I think 'butter' is just the generic yellow stuff they put on bread.
Come to think of it, no meal I had when growing up didn't come with a round of bread and butter. I wouldn't think of doing it now, of course (how déclassé, plus it would have to be artisan sourdough). I think this explains my love of unusual sandwiches. With bread and button constantly available you could make a sandwich out of anything on your plate.
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There's a fantastic one in Lerwick.
It took me by surprise when I was asked what kind of coffee I wanted, my mind stumbling between flat white, latte, cappuccino... Turns out he just meant whether I wanted one tablespoon of Nescafe or two.
Does Lockerbie truck stop count?
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Paulo's on the Uxbridge Road is one of the best traditional working men's cafes I know.
However they do serve wholemeal bread (on request) and have a coffee machine rather than instant.
Uxbridge Road is rather long. Is this Shepherd's Bush, White City, Acton, Ealing Hanwell, Southall, Hayes, Hillingdon or elsewhere??? ?
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Newtonmore Grill where Steve Carroll August audax events start/finish.
One at Tarvie on the Inverness - Ullapool Road. Rarely stop there, last time I did it was take away only, think the indoor cafe is open again now.
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
Still exists, though not quite so useful for Audaxers nowadays.
http://www.transportcafe.co.uk/truck-stops/the-new-hollies/
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Paulo's on the Uxbridge Road is one of the best traditional working men's cafes I know.
However they do serve wholemeal bread (on request) and have a coffee machine rather than instant.
Uxbridge Road is rather long. Is this Shepherd's Bush, White City, Acton, Ealing Hanwell, Southall, Hayes, Hillingdon or elsewhere??? ?
I think it's the one between Shepherd's Bush and Acton – I used to go there when I lived just off Askew Road (and boy has that gentrified, it's peak sourdough now, you can't do a shit there without it being artisanal).
I'm pleased to see they still seem to do a 'scaffolder's breakfast' for those that need the calorific support.
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If we are counting HUGE mugs of tea, Pete's Eats in Lanberis deserves a mention.
Many years ago there was an old school truck stop at Bassett's Pole. It is the only place I ever saw a tea pot with two spouts. It was huge and a burly woman would wave it around over a large tray of mugs until they were all full.
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They all seem pretty clean these days and toilets are a lot better than using the car park around the side. I'm not complaining. I'd rather suffer from nostalgia than dysentery.
What are the precise criteria for a greasy spoon these days? I'd go with
1. Menu must have numbered (or occasionally named) breakfasts. With one substitution allowed.
2. Tea should be in white mugs with a proper square teabag floating in it.
3. They should give you an appropriate look if you ask for semi-skimmed milk.
4. Everything should come with chips (except the chip-free breakfast selections to which you can add chips).
5. Toast should arrive looking like someone did a bad job of miniaturizing a mattress.
6. HP sauce. No pretenders.
7. It should be closed by 3pm.
8. They should have a daily special which should occasionally be liver and onions and unaccountably chicken chasseur. With chips.
The Caledonian Cafe in Huddersfield has had liver & onions as its special every day for at least the last 40 years.
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The A41 Truckstop near the Raven in Cheshire is still going.
Does the Red Lodge near Thetford still exist? The Norwich rowing clubs used to stop there on the way back from events in Cambridge and Bedford cause it was one of the few places with a big enough car park for the boat trailers.
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If we are counting HUGE mugs of tea, Pete's Eats in Lanberis deserves a mention.
My breakfast cup of tea comes from a Pete's Eats pint mug
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Liver and onions was my most hated food growing up. Chewy, chewy liver and sinewy bits and veins and god-knows-what that got stuck between your teeth. Admittedly, my mother never knowingly undercooks anything. You should see her cook a steak. You'd cry. At least 30 minutes in the pan.
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Long Itch Diner.
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Windy beat my to Newtonmoore truckstop.
I was going to suggest Ballinluig, but that doesn't really fit ian's list at all. It is positively posh in comparison...
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
I hope they've had the cleaners in since the 2007 running of the Cambrian 600. The toilets were truly memorable inna-Trainspotting-stylee :sick:
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Paulo's on the Uxbridge Road is one of the best traditional working men's cafes I know.
However they do serve wholemeal bread (on request) and have a coffee machine rather than instant.
Uxbridge Road is rather long. Is this Shepherd's Bush, White City, Acton, Ealing Hanwell, Southall, Hayes, Hillingdon or elsewhere??? ?
It's a matter of some debate. It's clearly in Acton, but aspires to be in Shepherd's Bush.
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Are you buying or selling?
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Are you buying or selling?
Or in YACF terms, is it the destination of the Silly Commuter Race to breakfast, or the start of the shit-is-that-the-time trek to Paddington?
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Yes, I wondered if it was the overnight from oxford brekkie stop.
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Newtonmore Grill where Steve Carroll August audax events start/finish.
One at Tarvie on the Inverness - Ullapool Road. Rarely stop there, last time I did it was take away only, think the indoor cafe is open again now.
I was expecting you to say the Butty Bus! (https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g2187963-d4070197-Reviews-The_Butty_Bus-Leverburgh_Isle_of_Harris_Lewis_and_Harris_Outer_Hebrides_The_Hebr.html)
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Newtonmore Grill where Steve Carroll August audax events start/finish.
One at Tarvie on the Inverness - Ullapool Road. Rarely stop there, last time I did it was take away only, think the indoor cafe is open again now.
I was expecting you to say the Butty Bus! (https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g2187963-d4070197-Reviews-The_Butty_Bus-Leverburgh_Isle_of_Harris_Lewis_and_Harris_Outer_Hebrides_The_Hebr.html)
Forgot about the Butty Bus :D
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Windy beat my to Newtonmoore truckstop.
I was going to suggest Ballinluig, but that doesn't really fit ian's list at all. It is positively posh in comparison...
8 quid for some chicken nuggets!
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Paulo's on the Uxbridge Road is one of the best traditional working men's cafes I know.
However they do serve wholemeal bread (on request) and have a coffee machine rather than instant.
Uxbridge Road is rather long. Is this Shepherd's Bush, White City, Acton, Ealing Hanwell, Southall, Hayes, Hillingdon or elsewhere??? ?
It's a matter of some debate. It's clearly in Acton, but aspires to be in Shepherd's Bush.
W12 is Shepherd's Bush and W3 is Acton. Them are the rules.
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
I hope they've had the cleaners in since the 2007 running of the Cambrian 600. The toilets were truly memorable inna-Trainspotting-stylee :sick:
Eons ago, I rode the old WCW when I was recovering from a tummy bug. The loos at the Raven Café were too disgusting for me to want risk eating anything cooked there.
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Paulo's on the Uxbridge Road is one of the best traditional working men's cafes I know.
However they do serve wholemeal bread (on request) and have a coffee machine rather than instant.
Uxbridge Road is rather long. Is this Shepherd's Bush, White City, Acton, Ealing Hanwell, Southall, Hayes, Hillingdon or elsewhere??? ?
It's a matter of some debate. It's clearly in Acton, but aspires to be in Shepherd's Bush.
W12 is Shepherd's Bush and W3 is Acton. Them are the rules.
Another vote here for Paulo's.
Were it closer, I'd be in there more often.
I can recommend The Big Breakfast in Perry Vale.
Local to me, I generally only need say 'The usual, please'.
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Surprised there are no equivalents left in Chelmo though. :'(
There may well be some left in Chelmo - just not at my end of town....
Edit: A bit like proper old skool chip shops. They've mostly been replaced with generic fast food joints. The sorts of places where you can get crap fish and chips, a crap burger, a rancid kebab or a microwaved pizza.
There are fortunately two left, but they are both at opposite ends of town.
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We even have proper chippies in the jungles of Surrey, the ones that are never open at the times when chips seem like a good idea, have non-brewed condiment and pickled eggs on the counter, wooden forks, and the exotic end of their menu is a burger. They still survive among the ubiquitous kebabaries and fast food foulness. One of my favourite memories of growing up was my gran sending me across the road to the chippie with a bowl to be filled. You took your own. I thought that was normal and everyone had a chip bowl and fish dish.
To be honest, and I know it's heretical, but I like the idea (and smell, of course) of fish and chips more than the actuality. After a couple of mouthfuls you're left dutifully shoveling stodge and grease into your mouth with little of your previous enthusiasm.
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Received wisdom is that turning your chippy into an ethnic food outlet by adding kebabs or Chinese to the menu allows you to open on a Sunday, a day on which chippies are normally banned from trading due to some archaic and no doubt Cromwellian law. I have no idea if this is really true.
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It's true that they're never open on Sundays and usually closed by 10pm, if not earlier. I have never known why. Surely we shouldn't blame a proper Englishman like Cromwell, this is undoubtedly some kind of anti-British EU law designed to let more foreign food onto our shores. Shame.
I remember some time back when I lived in Sheffalump, taken with idea of fish and chips as I meandered home early one Friday evening so I stopped at the local fish and chip shop. It had already closed – 7.30pm on a Friday evening. In studentland (off Ecclesall Road).
Blimey. Anyway, it had gone the last time I wandered past. Hairdressers, if I recall. That's an entirely different Friday evening, for sure.
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I remember some time back when I lived in Sheffalump, taken with idea of fish and chips as I meandered home early one Friday evening so I stopped at the local fish and chip shop. It had already closed – 7.30pm on a Friday evening. In studentland (off Ecclesall Road).
Blimey. Anyway, it had gone the last time I wandered past. Hairdressers, if I recall. That's an entirely different Friday evening, for sure.
The chippy with the eccentric opening hours we used to live opposite in Crookes seems to have turned into a trendy Italian place. I expect the owner was convicted of sexual assault or something, judging by the level of the banter[1] and the signage[2]. Good chips, thobut.
[1] Highly entertaining, TBH. As long as you could assemble a group for safety in numbers purposes who were able to keep a straight face when he'd inevitably manage to ask the most prudish lesbian present whether they like hot fish.
[2] A handwritten notice in the window declaring that "King Edwards make middle aged men randy" was my favourite.
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There's a chippy in the Low Town part of Bridgnorth which was similarly deserted when we went in there in a Saturday night; they then shut up shop and went home before 10pm. To be fair, their fish cakes, chips and gravy were very nice.
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I remember some time back when I lived in Sheffalump, taken with idea of fish and chips as I meandered home early one Friday evening so I stopped at the local fish and chip shop. It had already closed – 7.30pm on a Friday evening. In studentland (off Ecclesall Road).
Blimey. Anyway, it had gone the last time I wandered past. Hairdressers, if I recall. That's an entirely different Friday evening, for sure.
The chippy with the eccentric opening hours we used to live opposite in Crookes seems to have turned into a trendy Italian place. I expect the owner was convicted of sexual assault or something, judging by the level of the banter[1] and the signage[2]. Good chips, thobut.
[1] Highly entertaining, TBH. As long as you could assemble a group for safety in numbers purposes who were able to keep a straight face when he'd inevitably manage to ask the most prudish lesbian present whether they like hot fish.
[2] A handwritten notice in the window declaring that "King Edwards make middle aged men randy" was my favourite.
Wonderful double entendre given that there was a school yclept King Edwards nearby...
[couch potato]
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I always thought the odd opening hours (or fyring times) were due to the enormous cost of getting all that all oil (or fat) up to temperature. That's an awful lot of gas to get that kind of volume heated up. And then of course, it has to be left to cool to be drained and replaced.
I imagine the reason the generic fast food joints are so shit is because that piece of fish has been sat there for hours rather than being freshly fried...
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Surprised there are no equivalents left in Chelmo though. :'(
There may well be some left in Chelmo - just not at my end of town....
Edit: A bit like proper old skool chip shops. They've mostly been replaced with generic fast food joints. The sorts of places where you can get crap fish and chips, a crap burger, a rancid kebab or a microwaved pizza.
There are fortunately two left, but they are both at opposite ends of town.
Rosie's on the A414 opposite hylands park.
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The internet would suggest that it was illegal to sell fish and chips on a Sunday (in England at least, fish and chips – and I'm sorry – in Scotland aren't very good on any day of the week). But it might have changed. Whatever might be on the internet, it's not an easily digested synopsis of the laws of the land.
Alternatively, they may be following the British tradition of closing everything the moment there might be a danger of customers appearing.
I can't see why the specific heat capacity of a vat of oil would make any difference, once it's hot, it's hot, you may as well stay open. Decent chippies will cooking everything except the sad saveloy on demand.
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
I hope they've had the cleaners in since the 2007 running of the Cambrian 600. The toilets were truly memorable inna-Trainspotting-stylee :sick:
Also beloved of climbers on their way north, although ICMC always had a pub or Hilton park services stop, immediately before or after for toilets. Even we had limits.
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Alternatively, they may be following the British tradition of closing everything the moment there might be a danger of customers appearing.
That one's actually a French tradition, we just copied it in a half-arsed way.
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
I hope they've had the cleaners in since the 2007 running of the Cambrian 600. The toilets were truly memorable inna-Trainspotting-stylee :sick:
Also beloved of climbers on their way north, although ICMC always had a pub or Hilton park services stop, immediately before or after for toilets. Even we had limits.
Previously mentioned in the Audax Perms thread (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=63418.msg1995471#msg1995471), apropos of JayP instituting an eponymous perm.
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I can't see why the specific heat capacity of a vat of oil would make any difference, once it's hot, it's hot, you may as well stay open.
You can't keep a large vat of oil at over 200 degrees without a constantly massive heat input!
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Depends how you define massive. The specific heat capacity of cooking oil is about half that of water, but it stills takes more energy to heat up than keep hot. Obviously, there's a balance between keeping things going and the likely number of customers.
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I remember some time back when I lived in Sheffalump, taken with idea of fish and chips as I meandered home early one Friday evening so I stopped at the local fish and chip shop. It had already closed – 7.30pm on a Friday evening. In studentland (off Ecclesall Road).
Blimey. Anyway, it had gone the last time I wandered past. Hairdressers, if I recall. That's an entirely different Friday evening, for sure.
The chippy with the eccentric opening hours we used to live opposite in Crookes seems to have turned into a trendy Italian place. I expect the owner was convicted of sexual assault or something, judging by the level of the banter[1] and the signage[2]. Good chips, thobut.
[1] Highly entertaining, TBH. As long as you could assemble a group for safety in numbers purposes who were able to keep a straight face when he'd inevitably manage to ask the most prudish lesbian present whether they like hot fish.
[2] A handwritten notice in the window declaring that "King Edwards make middle aged men randy" was my favourite.
Was that the Admiral or the 5 Star?
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Received wisdom is that turning your chippy into an ethnic food outlet by adding kebabs or Chinese to the menu allows you to open on a Sunday, a day on which chippies are normally banned from trading due to some archaic and no doubt Cromwellian law. I have no idea if this is really true.
Not true. The Sunday trading act 1994 made it legal for fish and chip shops to open on Sundays.
Actually technically it allowed them to sell fish and chips on Sundays, previously they could open but not sell fish and chips. I think non fish and chip shops could sell fish and chips hence your thing about kebab shops. The Sunday trading laws were really bizarre before 1994, even if you didn't want de regulation of Sunday trading what you could and couldn't sell and from where made very little sense.
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I'd heard it was because, back in ye olde days, fishing boats didn't go out on Sundays, hence there was no fresh fish to be fried. Sounds like it took till 1994 for the law to catch up with the invention of freezers!
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What are the precise criteria for a greasy spoon these days? I'd go with
1. Menu must have numbered (or occasionally named) breakfasts. With one substitution allowed.
2. Tea should be in white mugs with a proper square teabag floating in it.
3. They should give you an appropriate look if you ask for semi-skimmed milk.
4. Everything should come with chips (except the chip-free breakfast selections to which you can add chips).
5. Toast should arrive looking like someone did a bad job of miniaturizing a mattress.
6. HP sauce. No pretenders.
7. It should be closed by 3pm.
8. They should have a daily special which should occasionally be liver and onions and unaccountably chicken chasseur. With chips.
The Silver Ball at Reed (just south of Royston on the A10) is perfect except for the sub-par fake brown sauce. I've thought about taking my own.
I'm still hunting for the perfect greasy spoon in Cambridge, it's all a bit too AvocadoSourDoughTwattish. BLD's on mill road is probably closest although they do serve quite a lot of salad.
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That's the worst thing ever. I don't see HP sauce bottles on the table, I'm not going in. Generic brown sauce? Groo. The only thing worse is where they've refilled HP sauce bottles with generic brown from Costco or somewhere. If there's one reason to keep the death penalty, it's this.
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The bacon and tomato sandwich test.
Asking me about type of bread. Instant fail. (Although, I suppose asking white or brown is allowed)
Anything on the plate that I have not asked for. Fail. (Please note. I did not ask for crisps and soggy green leaves, so why have you poured them all over the plate?)
Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to buy a proper old school bacon and tinned tomatoes sandwiches so I grudgingly accept fresh tomatoes.
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(Kisses thread.)
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For fun take an American (if you don't have one, they're hireable by the hour). Watch them try to order. You know the way they order, finicking up everything, putting stuff on the side, removing, substituting, over-easifying and the like (they genetically can't just order an item off the menu). You get the one substitution, deal with it. They typically can't. You see them collapse in on themselves, this is the way their world ends, over a bacon sandwich. Then you offer them brown sauce. What is it, they'll plead, why trying to shift their chair backwards so they can bolt for the door but failing because it's wedged into the manky lino floor covering.
It's sauce and it's brown, that's what it is. And a fried breakfast isn't right without it. Plus it can be used to stick things to the table in case of earthquakes.
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The bacon and tomato sandwich test.
Asking me about type of bread. Instant fail. (Although, I suppose asking white or brown is allowed)
Ok, you've got me here. What other choices can there be? Even in the most hipsterish place, I don't think I've ever been offered any others (they might give you organic sourdough with chia seeds, but then they don't usually give you a choice about it).
Anything on the plate that I have not asked for. Fail. (Please note. I did not ask for crisps and soggy green leaves, so why have you poured them all over the plate?)
Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to buy a proper old school bacon and tinned tomatoes sandwiches so I grudgingly accept fresh tomatoes.
Oh yeah. What is it about crisps nowadays? Crisps with sandwiches, crisps with this, crisps with that. The other day I was offered crisps with a jacket potato. ::-) (Perhaps they should have made it chips instead. :D)
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The chippy with the eccentric opening hours we used to live opposite in Crookes
Was that the Admiral or the 5 Star?
No. Further along, opposite the top of Cobden View Road. Doesn't seem to have been a chippy since before Google Streetview has been there.
The Admiral was the backup chippy of choice for when we were thwarted by eccentric opening hours, unless $housemate felt like an expedition to the Broomhill Friery.
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Today's Café - a few doors down from South Croydon bus garage so it pretty much epitomizes the best parts of a greasy spoon.
Fat Boys on the Cambridge Road between Norbiton & New Malden - a very greasy greasy spoon.
Terry's Café, Great Southwark Street - probably the best cooked breakfast I have had in London ever. Fabulous interior too - makes the Regency look shabby.
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That's the worst thing ever. I don't see HP sauce bottles on the table, I'm not going in. Generic brown sauce? Groo. The only thing worse is where they've refilled HP sauce bottles with generic brown from Costco or somewhere. If there's one reason to keep the death penalty, it's this.
I'm a southern poof, and have no love of brown sauce, but generic brown sauce in unmarked brown bottles is an accessibility issue. Once you get north of about Stoke On Trent[1], there's a danger of there not being an unmarked red bottle of ketchup alongside it as a warning to employ a strong light source, colorimeter, or careful observation of the sauce-adding behaviour of a known northerner before letting it anywhere near your chips.
Proper HP sauce in branded bottles is easy to avoid.
[1] Scientifically proven to be the point where The Midlands becomes The North.
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Oh yeah. What is it about crisps nowadays? Crisps with sandwiches, crisps with this, crisps with that. The other day I was offered crisps with a jacket potato. ::-) (Perhaps they should have made it chips instead. :D)
I assume that since Walkers started cooking them in triffid oil, they have to give them away.
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Today's Café - a few doors down from South Croydon bus garage so it pretty much epitomizes the best parts of a greasy spoon.
Fat Boys on the Cambridge Road between Norbiton & New Malden - a very greasy greasy spoon.
Terry's Café, Great Southwark Street - probably the best cooked breakfast I have had in London ever. Fabulous interior too - makes the Regency look shabby.
Not been to Fat Boys yet, only the one by New Malden Station that only takes cash. I suspect that and Fat Boys are equidistant for me...
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I like regional variations in chippies.
Many years ago, when I lived in the Midlands, I'd never experienced or even considered putting gravy on chips. So I always like to do so when north of the Watford Gap. I like it very much.
I rememeber when one of my housemates at uni (from The NorthTM) came down to visit in the summer. We had a few beers and then went to a chippie and I fancied adding a Savaloy. When I ordered it he went "WHAT THE FOOK IS A SAVALOY?!!!"
Happy days :P
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You should have given him the honest answer "pig brains in a sausage skin, but I think this is a cheap one because it is made from real meat."
When I was a little kid, too small to help with the horses, a treat (to keep my out of the way) would be to let me buy a battered sausage. These were only sold at some seaside dubious greasy shacks or, for some reason, racecourses. Cheap sausages of dubious provenance fried in batter. Fantastic.
The seaside treat of a battered pineapple ring, consumed after swimming lessons, eaten while the pineapple was so hot it burnt your mouth. Double fantastic.
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...for some reason, racecourses.
Well, if you have to put a horse down, you might as well make use of it :P
There was a great chippie on Manly Corso when I lived there. No idea if it's still going, but it reminded me of days out at Clacton or Walton or Southend etc when I was a kid.
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...for some reason, racecourses.
Well, if you have to put a horse down, you might as well make use of it :P
My dad (racehorse breeder, trainer, chairman of racecourse and amateur jockey) was a proponent of putting down a large proportion of the racehorses - too many, in too bad a condition. He'd eaten horse in France. Sooo, I'm not saying he'd have advocated an on-course butcher (mostly because it would have put off the public) . . .
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Barakta went to a chippy in Glasgow recently that failed to competently batter a sausage. Shocking, I know.
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There's a café on the east bound A30 at Ashford/Bedfont (so just south of Heathrow airport) which certainly used to tick all the boxes for old school greasy spoon, although I haven't been in there for a few years so they may well have smartened up their act - it is still there.
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I like regional variations in chippies.
Me too.
Southampton (where I grew up) menu: cod, plaice, haddock, whiting, steak and kidney pie, sausage (in batter, of course)
Manchester (uni) menu: fish, steak and kidney pie, cheese and onion pie, meat and potato pie, meat pie. All with the options of gravy or curry.
And there's a particularly good little chippy in Sheffield which does cod roe which I've never seen anywhere else, but which is fabulous.
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Scottish fish suppers were always a source of disappointment. I'm sorry to disparage a nation, but it's true. In the entire history of humanity to date there's never been such a look of horror pasted on a person's face as my mothers when they salt-n-sossed her chips. As to my dad, he summed it up simply as 'the fuck.' They drove all the way to Edinburgh and turned round because they didn't like the fish and chips and 'it was cold' and my mother hadn't taken a coat. My parents don't travel well.
Battered sausage is still my favourite (much better than fish which is just too much greasy batter in the end). You should be able to bite it in half and watch fat ooze out. It makes my heart flutter. Admittedly, flutter as in a dying butterfly with one wing yanked off, but flutter all the same. And mushy peas. Come on, mushy peas. It makes me happy – it makes me want – just writing the words mushy peas. I love mushy peas and I'm not afraid to admit it.
Of course, there was the curry sauce, rice, and chips with a fritter on the top which was possibly the cheapest way to get an entire day's recommended calorific input in one go.
Our Liverpool friday tradition was fish chips and curry sauce from one of the chippies down in Chinatown that used to be open sometime after bedtime-o'clock.
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My Mum (a Glaswegian who has been in England too long) asked for a cheese and onion pie at a Paisley chippie last week... They looked at her like she had two heads ;D
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they salt-n-sossed her chips.
=?
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they salt-n-sossed her chips.
=?
Salt and broon sauce.
The Embra default just to surprise non natives.
I first encountered it as a fresher student at the now sadly defunct Bratisanis, roon the corner from Pollock Halls.
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It's a very watery brown sauce, halfway to non-brewed condiment, as such it looks like the epitaphic dribbles of a serious bout of diarrhoea. I don't believe it's possible to stop any Edinburgh chippy putting it on your chips.
I'm not sure about gravy on chips unless there's pie involved.
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I love salt 'n sauce (or however you're supposed to spell it).
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I'd heard it was because, back in ye olde days, fishing boats didn't go out on Sundays, hence there was no fresh fish to be fried. Sounds like it took till 1994 for the law to catch up with the invention of freezers!
AIUI boats not going out on a Sunday is the reason why you shouldn't go to the chippy on a Monday.
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And mushy peas. Come on, mushy peas. It makes me happy – it makes me want – just writing the words mushy peas. I love mushy peas and I'm not afraid to admit it.
Did you know it was National Mushy Pea Day last week?
One of my clubmates runs a fish & chip shop in Ramsgate, which was recently named one of the top two in the southeast in a national competition. He celebrated National Mushy Pea Day by giving away a mushy pea fritter with every order.
Totally awesome.
ETA: even better - it was International Mushy Pea Day https://mushypeaday.com/
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Silver Ball Royston, any local audaxer will know it. Gravy and chips availability seems to start whilst heading northwards around the Nottingham area.
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Mushy peas are just the wrongest thing available in any chippie. And there's a lot of competition!
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...any local audaxer will know it.
I know many of the establishments mentioned upthread through Audax, but what's that absolute shithole in Chatteris called? The food is so bad, it's actually good! :P
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OMG, I missed mushy pea day. And I'd forgotten about the supreme splendour of a mushy pea fritter. Mushy peas deep fried, oh my giddy aunt. That's like being hit in the face with a dinosaur-depleting-sized meteorite of awesome.
I don't think they do mushy pea fritters around here. The people of Surrey aren't ready (to be honest, they're not ready for a lot of things, the 21st century for instance). Shame, because I could eat one. I could do some fish and chips but I suspect my evening's booze marathon will preclude the 10pm deep frying curfew.
Actually the last time I had fish and chips was in Deal, sitting on the wall looking at the sea, which is the properest way to eat them.
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Mushy peas are just the wrongest thing available in any chippie. And there's a lot of competition!
As a wise man once said... shit off!
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Mushy pies?
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Yum mushy peas!
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And there's a particularly good little chippy in Sheffield which does cod roe which I've never seen anywhere else, but which is fabulous.
Danes are rather fond of cod roe. Is there a Scandic connection?
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And there's a particularly good little chippy in Sheffield which does cod roe which I've never seen anywhere else, but which is fabulous.
Danes are rather fond of cod roe. Is there a Scandic connection?
Not that I'm aware of. I think it's just 'always' sold it and even when it changed hands they kept doing it.
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I guess mushy peas are a Marmite type thing.
I just don't understand them.
I mean you could get some fresh peas, or even frozen peas and gently boil them for a few minutes adding a little seasoning. Delicious.
But oh no! You have to force feed them water and food colouring until their livers are ready to explode. Like a pea version of Foie gras.
Gopping.
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Like a pea version of Foie gras.
Mmmmmm...pois gras.
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I guess mushy peas are a Marmite type thing.
I just don't understand them.
I mean you could get some fresh peas, or even frozen peas and gently boil them for a few minutes adding a little seasoning. Delicious.
But oh no! You have to force feed them water and food colouring until their livers are ready to explode. Like a pea version of Foie gras.
Gopping.
You've forgotten the drying, then soaking in bicarb.
*then* cook them.
They are caviar, mate
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They are caviar, mate
I guess they are to some people. Weird people, but people none the less :P
I like to go to the local market of a Saturday morning and eat a whole black pudding raw. Some people think I'm weird for that, but I think that's normal....
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Like a pea version of Foie gras.
Mmmmmm...pois gras.
;D How has that name not been used yet? (Or maybe it has and I just didn't know?) Especially with recipes like mushy peas on toast (https://mushypeaday.com/peas-on-toast-in-vogue/) – and they even recommend using gluten free bread! Or seeds! I mean, roll over guacamole, mushy peas are the classest of middle class toast toppings!
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...any local audaxer will know it.
I know many of the establishments mentioned upthread through Audax, but what's that absolute shithole in Chatteris called? The food is so bad, it's actually good! :P
The Green Welly
Teethgrinder actually likes it! I have never been served worse food - but I've been trying to be charitable and think that it was August bank holiday weekend when we visited so maybe they were short staffed and had peeled all the potatoes a week in advance (they were grey) and they didn't know how to cook everything else. It was truly awful.
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That's the one!
I've been trying to be charitable and think that it was August bank holiday weekend when we visited so maybe they were short staffed
You're just too nice :P
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I think we forget that dried, soaked, cooked marrowfat peas are a very different vegetable from the petit pois I like with fish.
Mussy peas are a dull dhal with green colouring.
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couple of cafes that nearly pass the greasy spoon test expect the food isn't that greasy are Blossom Street Cafe in York, on the way into town from the Knavesmire, £6 for large breakfast including 2 slices of white toast dripping with yellow spread with a large mug of tea or coffee, & Frenchgate Cafe in Doncaster, basically everything comes with chips if it isn't a breakfast.
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And there's a particularly good little chippy in Sheffield which does cod roe which I've never seen anywhere else, but which is fabulous.
Danes are rather fond of cod roe. Is there a Scandic connection?
Well it was part of the Danelaw but then again that was 1000 yeasr ago ....
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Mushy peas.
An ex, originally from Yorkshire, was very much into them.
So there was an occasion when we bought some to go with our fish and chips.
In a tin.
Smedley's - if I recall correctly.
On the side of the tin was a picture of some mushy peas onna plate, captioned with the words 'Serving suggestion'.
'Like, what are you supposed to do with them?' Sal snarked, 'Throw them on the floor?'
How we laughed.
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[Totally OT] Didn't the late great Neville Chanin work at Smedley's?
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Indeed. Mushy peas aren't squished garden peas, they're marrowfat, the mystery pea. They were the best part of my childhood bonfire nights, served nuclear hot in polystyrene cups with a spoonful of mint sauce mixed in. I confess I've never tried them on toast, not sure about that. My wife had smashed avocado on toast (obligatory sourdough) the other weekend. Not sure about that. Beans on toast. Fine. Cheese on toast. Excellent.
Anyway, to celebrate this thread I just wandered down to the cafe and stuffed myself with a cooked breakfast. Bacon (well done), sausage, egg, tomato, beans, hash browns, toast, lashings of HP and two mugs of tea while gazing out at the bedroom-attired mannequins at the dildo proving grounds opposite. Anyway, I'll probably have to do an extra ten lengths in the pool later to work that lot off (the breakfast, not the mannequins).
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[Totally OT] Didn't the late great Neville Chanin work at Smedley's?
He certainly did, before going to Walls.
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Plenty in the East Mids, in town and transport.
My favourite - Grindleford Station Cafe, not only all the qualities of a proper greasy spoon, but in a location where you'd expect a twee tea shop. Worth the trip by bike or train.
Anglers seem to appreciate the same menu, I've been to a few attached to fishing lakes, most recently Delves just north of Thorne.
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Suspect anglers, like Audaxers, are out for hours in the cold and wet from silly o'clock and appreciate lots of hot calories!
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Local greasy spoon a short cycle ride away for me, adjacent to Cosford R.A.F. camp offers fish finger sandwiches.
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Fish fingers should only be eaten by children. Making a sandwich out of random foods should only ever be done by ghastly, working class northerners.
So if you're 8, impoverished and from the north, you're good to go. If not, it's a no no...
:P
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Piffle. A fish finger and mushy pea sandwich is more awesome than Godzilla breaking the land speed record on a rocket-powered skateboard while singing a medley of rock anthems and punching the sky hard enough to wind it.
But please, none of those handmade panko-crusted fish fingers on artisan sourdough with aioli. Proper fish fingers are trawled from the nearest freezer, served up on white bread, and unapologetically sauced with God's chosen condiment, salad cream. I don't know what mayonnaise is, I suspect it's French love crud, so I'm not having it make the unpleasant wet patch in my sandwich.
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Salad cream should only ever be consumed if you have a time machine. One that you can set to "The 1970s"
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Local greasy spoon a short cycle ride away for me, adjacent to Cosford R.A.F. camp offers fish finger sandwiches.
Is that the one by the railway bridge on the way to the museum? My local CTC group tends to use the museum cafe as a coffee stop, so I've never explored further.
A quick Google suggests that the Crossroads Cafe on Bellenden Road, my local greasy spoon when I lived in Peckham, has thankfully survived the ravages of gentrification, and from the reviews it's as good as ever.
I know of a couple of good chippies where I am now (and a couple of terrible ones), but can only think of one actual greasy spoon caff, which I've never tried; as it's opposite a haulier's yard, I presume it's suitably greasy...
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I don't know what the vans outside the Carlisle Road's sheds purvey. They probably tick all the boxes except seats, shelter and toilets.
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I had a fish ginger sandwich for lunch on Friday. No salad cream but plenty of ketchup.
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Local greasy spoon a short cycle ride away for me, adjacent to Cosford R.A.F. camp offers fish finger sandwiches.
Is that the one by the railway bridge on the way to the museum? My local CTC group tends to use the museum cafe as a coffee stop, so I've never explored further.
Yes, that's the one.
Our cycling group tends to avoid the museum cafe due to their high prices.
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I had a fish ginger sandwich for lunch on Friday. No salad cream but plenty of ketchup.
Being particularly dim tonight- I spent a while wondering what on earth that was.
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Local greasy spoon a short cycle ride away for me, adjacent to Cosford R.A.F. camp offers fish finger sandwiches.
Is that the one by the railway bridge on the way to the museum? My local CTC group tends to use the museum cafe as a coffee stop, so I've never explored further.
Yes, that's the one.
Our cycling group tends to avoid the museum cafe due to their high prices.
Ta - will have to take a look next time I'm out that way solo.
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I mean you could get some fresh peas, or even frozen peas and gently boil them for a few minutes adding a little seasoning
A chippie in Kirkwall offered to do just this when we were there a couple of years ago. I explained to Mrs TB as I got on the bike to get them that mushy peas were most unlikely north of the 55th parallel*. But I did as was told and asked and now I'm telling this story. They really wanted to help but just had no idea what I was asking for.
* a colleague from Berwick-on-Tweed reckons she can't ever remember seeing mushy peas there
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For a nation where the national pastime is deep frying, Scotland really can't do chippies in any format. Horrid chips and manky gravel-battered fish that taste like they've been fried in used motor oil, and a lack of mushy peas to soften the blow.
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What? Scottish chippies are great! You can often get your booze and fags in there too. Basically your weekly shop :P
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For a nation where the national pastime is deep frying, Scotland really can't do chippies in any format. Horrid chips and manky gravel-battered fish that taste like they've been fried in used motor oil, and a lack of mushy peas to soften the blow.
I think that's your experience simply because of weight of numbers.
There are so many Deep Fried Emporia, that you have simply sampled too infrequently to characterise the distribution.
There are indeed a large number on the low side of the distribution.
But there is also a high side to the Gaussian curve, and due to the large sample size, the high end outliers are actually surprisingly good.
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Mostly Edinburgian, admittedly, but I've sampled a good number and they've been universally poor. That doesn't mean there isn't a good one, of course. There might be one. Though I've never found it. And even if the chips were close to initially edible, there's always the prematurely ejaculated soss to contend with. There's no known intervention that prevents that.
Of course, I grew up in the East Midlands we didn't have things so exotic such as haggis and bridies, and there's only so much creativity you can exercise with potatoes and coal, and only one of the two can really be deep fried (though I'm sure the more avant garde friers tried). So our chippies are an art form.
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I worked in one of our local chippies for about 5 years (thought GCSEs and A levels and some of my gap year then bits of holiday cover) - the boss gave me an gold engraved (alarm) clock when I left and was immensely proud because I was the first one of "his girls" ever to go to uni.
It left me with a deep suspicion of non-brewed condiment (you should see what the stuff does to concrete if it isn't diluted properly), a large number of small burns scars and an inability to view mushy peas as food that lasted for years. In excess of 15 years. I was converted back to the cause by the mushy peas at the Magpie in Whitby, when we visited with friends one of whom said they were the best mushy peas he'd had in a long time and I should at least try. The EldestCub, then quite small, may well have pointed out about CrinklyAuntie and the olives (a traditional family tale told to small fussy people as proof that tastes can change) so, hoist by my own petard, I had to try 'em. I recommend them to those who love mushy peas, and those who think they don't but are able to test the theory.
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I've just watched about 5 vidoes on how to make chip shop curry sauce. I'm going to give it a go :)
I promise to try mushy peas again soon as it's been about 25 years...
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I promise to try mushy peas again soon as it's been about 25 years...
I recommend going to Whitby to do so, and eating in at the Magpie. The chips aren't veggie (and the menu says so) but they do the nicest veggie lentil cottage pie I've ever eaten which, along with the peas, is why it is my favourite fish restaurant. And everything came with slices of white whoosh bread-n-butter too :D
There's since been 2 or 3 other places that I've tried and like mushy peas.
Despite this, I'm not sure I could buy them from the chippy I worked in 25 years ago. Which, funnily enough, was probably Mr Larrington's term-time local purveyor of deep fried delights when he was a young oik, although I reckon that he probably left town a bit before I started working there.
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I promise to try mushy peas again soon as it's been about 25 years...
I recommend going to Whitby to do so, and eating in at the Magpie.
But not too soon, I don't think it's reopened yet after the fire that gutted it in the Spring.
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:o I hadn't heard about that.
Reopening early December apparently.
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Two fires one after the other!
I think the takeaway is already open.
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When I used to work as a
Combustion Engineer Someone who used to blow things up for a living, at British Gas Research, frying ranges were the scariest things to work on. We had plenty of fires in the lab, but we had good burly men with moustaches to put them out. I also got electrocuted more times than I care to remember when testing the electrickery....
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Isn't non-brewed condiment just diluted acetic acid and caramel colouring ('yes,' the internet said earlier)? I didn't know you could dilute it yourself. Awesome, I love chemicals, me.
I dunno, I have to confess I'd rather have actual malt vinegar on my chips. I mean, it's not like it's expensive enough to require substitution, not even for a chap like me who deluges his chips. There has to be a puddle in the bottom of the tray. That said, you expect to see non-brewed condiment there on the counter, next to the wooden forks, and murky jar of pickled eggs.
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Despite this, I'm not sure I could buy them from the chippy I worked in 25 years ago. Which, funnily enough, was probably Mr Larrington's term-time local purveyor of deep fried delights when he was a young oik, although I reckon that he probably left town a bit before I started working there.
Oh yes! Chips, scraps and curry sauce!
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On the subject of Scottish fish & chips, I once had an excellent example of the genre on a family holiday in Oban. It's the only time I've ever had fish & chips in Scotland, so that's a 100% hit rate.
However, we were spared/denied the pleasure of 'soss' - perhaps because the chippy owner recognised us for the Sassenachs we were? I wasn't aware of the existence of soss at the time, otherwise I might have asked for it - you've got to try these things at least once.
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I wasn't joking when I wrote 'epitaphic diarrhoea dribbles.' On your chips. The only brown stuff on chips should be gravy and then only north of Wigan. I'm drawing a gravy line across the country. Gravy isn't permitted further south, they'll mess it up.
There are shit fish and chip shops in England. Lots of them. But the hit rate is generally a lot better south of the border. I don't know how people do it wrong. OK I do, oil not hot enough, food left slumbering under the heat lamp for a day (with the exception of the sad saveloy which needs to have been in the cabinet for a week to properly mature), etc. That kind of thing ought to be a treasonable offence. Bring back Tyburn.
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Isn't non-brewed condiment just diluted acetic acid and caramel colouring ('yes,' the internet said earlier)? I didn't know you could dilute it yourself. Awesome, I love chemicals, me.
It's supplied to chippies (and presumably other bits of the catering trade) in large flagons of concentrate that then need to be diluted appropriately....
(https://driverspickles.co.uk/uploads/smallcjprod53aa965f21d9d.jpg)
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It's the corrosive warning symbol that makes it.
Here's Tom Scott explaining non-brewed condiment with the aid of some seagulls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642x2Y3Zla0
https://youtu.be/642x2Y3Zla0
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I like regional variations in chippies.
Many years ago, when I lived in the Midlands, I'd never experienced or even considered putting gravy on chips. So I always like to do so when north of the Watford Gap. I like it very much.
I rememeber when one of my housemates at uni (from The NorthTM) came down to visit in the summer. We had a few beers and then went to a chippie and I fancied adding a Savaloy. When I ordered it he went "WHAT THE FOOK IS A SAVALOY?!!!"
Happy days :P
You should have said "Something you can eat with a wally" ......
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It's true that they're never open on Sundays and usually closed by 10pm, if not earlier. I have never known why. Surely we shouldn't blame a proper Englishman like Cromwell, this is undoubtedly some kind of anti-British EU law designed to let more foreign food onto our shores. Shame.
I remember some time back when I lived in Sheffalump, taken with idea of fish and chips as I meandered home early one Friday evening so I stopped at the local fish and chip shop. It had already closed – 7.30pm on a Friday evening. In studentland (off Ecclesall Road).
Blimey. Anyway, it had gone the last time I wandered past. Hairdressers, if I recall. That's an entirely different Friday evening, for sure.
My dad and his mate John were well miffed when Gordon Whittle sold his chippy on to someone who didn't realise it was supposed to stay open till my dad and John went in on their way back from the pub on Friday nights.
Mushy peas are an abomination on the face of this earth. Chips and gravy is delicious, but I'm veggie now so it is unavailable to me.
Previously mentioned in the Audax Perms thread (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=63418.msg1995471#msg1995471), apropos of JayP instituting an eponymous perm.
As did Kevin Keegan.
On the subject of Scottish fish & chips, I once had an excellent example of the genre on a family holiday in Oban. It's the only time I've ever had fish & chips in Scotland, so that's a 100% hit rate.
However, we were spared/denied the pleasure of 'soss' - perhaps because the chippy owner recognised us for the Sassenachs we were? I wasn't aware of the existence of soss at the time, otherwise I might have asked for it - you've got to try these things at least once.
Soss is an east coast thing. They won't have it in Oban.
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/glasgow-man-says-edinburgh-ketchup-charge-racist-1-3062264
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Chips and gravy is delicious, but I'm veggie now so it is unavailable to me.
You like a nice bit of cheese though. Almost always containing a bit of dead cow...
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When I used to work as a Combustion Engineer Someone who used to blow things up for a living, at British Gas Research, frying ranges were the scariest things to work on. We had plenty of fires in the lab, but we had good burly men with moustaches to put them out. I also got electrocuted more times than I care to remember when testing the electrickery....
You only get electrocuted once.
My food rock bottom was a deep fried pizza somewhere near Stirling.
Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk
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Soss is an east coast thing. They won't have it in Oban.
Ah! That would explain it then. Thanks!
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Ian, is your ‘gravy line’ anything like this? (https://www.redmolotov.com/catalogue/tshirts/all/chips-and-gravy-tshirt.html)
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Pretty much so, though the southern border appears too low, like the waistline of those hammock-crotched jeans favoured by feckless urban youth. While we did have chips and gravy in the East Midlands such a choice would make you out as a potential dissident, one of those people who might be found to be 'talking proper.' We had little tolerance for people who spoke in such a manner that there arose a genuine danger of comprehensibility.
Now, we had gravy, don't get me wrong. But it was proper gravy, stewed up after you'd roasted a joint of meat dry (top tip, if you start Thursday evening it can be ready for Sunday dinner). It was a sort of gloopy stuff, the consistency (and taste) of warm bitumen.
Now you could have curry sauce in the chippy, which was an odd one, because there was near total aversion to anything 'foreign' that chip shop curry sauce slinked its way around. OK, I know it's not actually curry, but it's was dangerously spicy for the East Midlands. We'd only got salt and pepper a few years earlier.
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I'm trying to imagine the reaction of people in Poland to eating chips with gravy. Or curry sauce. They think vinegar's weird enough. Mayonnaise or ketchup they can cope with.
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They'd probably disavow poutine then.
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The real chip divide is between oil and fat. I can see that beef dripping has advantages, but it congeals on fingers and lips.
I'm interested in the cultural role of 'Hot Pot' in Lancashire and South Cumbria. It comes in those big school meal flat tins, and is meat and potato, with a crust on top. It's served with pickled beetroot and pickled red cabbage. It's rarely seen in cafes, but is served at community events, often church quizzes and the like. There's a whole industry devoted to providing hot pot suppers. https://www.hotpotsuppercompany.co.ukhttps://www.hotpotsuppercompany.co.uk
There's always been a veggie option, as it's traditional for Fridays in a strongly Catholic area. The ultimate would have apple pie with cheese as a dessert.
You might never encounter 'Hot Pot', if you didn't go to communal events.
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They'd probably disavow poutine then.
I really have to scoff some of that the next time I'm in Canuckistan. Is it really as awsum as the concept?
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Poutine won't win a beauty contest, it sounds like a insult (you feelthy poutine), and like all proper Englishmen I distrust anything even vaguely French, but it's oddly quite tasty. Chips, cheese, gravy. It's pretty much like eating an entire northerner, except that the chips are in a tray rather than on the shoulder.
Mind you, the only time I lived in Ottawa was over the winter, during the ice storms and minus 30s/40s, so I was cold enough to superconduct. I'd would have eaten anything hot and calorific.
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I'm interested in the cultural role of 'Hot Pot' in Lancashire and South Cumbria. It comes in those big school meal flat tins, and is meat and potato, with a crust on top. It's served with pickled beetroot and pickled red cabbage. It's rarely seen in cafes, but is served at community events, often church quizzes and the like. There's a whole industry devoted to providing hot pot suppers. https://www.hotpotsuppercompany.co.ukhttps://www.hotpotsuppercompany.co.uk
There's always been a veggie option, as it's traditional for Fridays in a strongly Catholic area. The ultimate would have apple pie with cheese as a dessert.
You might never encounter 'Hot Pot', if you didn't go to communal events.
As a barn dance caller who used to live in Wigan I've had a lot of hotpot over the years. The band used to score them out of 10 and we'd always give a special mention at the end of the evening for a 10. Very good cheap fuel for communal events. Much better than the 'ploughman's' we tend to get down here.
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When I was a younger man, I used to play guitar in a modern, contemporary, popular music band. For some reason I cannot remember or fathom, we were booked for a gig in Wigan. Afterwards we went to a chip shop and I had the best (meat of unspecified origin) pie I've ever had.
The pies are the only thing that would entice me to return to Wigan :P
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When I was a younger man, I used to play guitar in a modern, contemporary, popular music band. For some reason I cannot remember or fathom, we were booked for a gig in Wigan. Afterwards we went to a chip shop and I had the best (meat of unspecified origin) pie I've ever had.
So basically you are saying that Wigan pies are without peer?
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When I was a younger man, I used to play guitar in a modern, contemporary, popular music band. For some reason I cannot remember or fathom, we were booked for a gig in Wigan. Afterwards we went to a chip shop and I had the best (meat of unspecified origin) pie I've ever had.
So basically you are saying that Wigan pies are without peer?
:) ;D
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
I once braved the upstairs rooms to change for a time trial. I think that inoculations were a pre-requisite.
It’s now been bought by a chap who has a vision of a chain of good quality, attractive stops for what presumably are now called logistic transport operative executives. I don’t know how many others he has now, but the old Hollies is certainly no more. There is a rumour that there is salad on the menu now!
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When I was a younger man, I used to play guitar in a modern, contemporary, popular music band. For some reason I cannot remember or fathom, we were booked for a gig in Wigan. Afterwards we went to a chip shop and I had the best (meat of unspecified origin) pie I've ever had.
So basically you are saying that Wigan pies are without peer?
It took me quite a while to get that, but now I do ;D
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Orwell that ends well...
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I 'grew up' in the Hollies on the A5 between Cannock and Gailey. HQ for many TT's and reliability trials when I started cycling back in the 70s and a regular stop on training/club runs.
I once braved the upstairs rooms to change for a time trial. I think that inoculations were a pre-requisite.
It’s now been bought by a chap who has a vision of a chain of good quality, attractive stops for what presumably are now called logistic transport operative executives. I don’t know how many others he has now, but the old Hollies is certainly no more. There is a rumour that there is salad on the menu now!
There's two, the other is just outside Holyhead, open late but not 24hrs.
http://www.rktruckstops.co.uk/locations/