Fish-and-Chip-Friday

So, I was tidying in the fridge last night and found I had three open jars of tartar sauce.

This might not seem so random as it first occurs. I hav been going through a nesting process recently, tidying and decluttering. One of the aspects of that is that I am trying to reduce the amount of food I have in the house. Usually, you see, I have a spare of everything - it stops me, for example, running out of rice because even if I finish the bag, I know there is always a spare in.

But, living on my own, this can often mean that things hang around for quite a while before getting used. It often also means that I end up with ridiculous numbers of jars, bottle and packets kicking around. For example, pickles. I had a jar of tomato chutney, a jar of apple chutney, a jar of sweet pickle and a jar of piccalilli. Sauces: tomato ketchup, brown sauce, barbeque, bombay, curry, 'hot' and soy. Ridiculous. So I have decided to start using these up. Which is where I found the tartar sauces. Clearly the jars have all become huddled in amongst the other jars and I have not seen them and opened new ones. This is ridiculous. However the most recent one was a home-made tartar sauce. And very nice it is too. But I can understand how I didn't find the others and decided to make some up: I haven't had my usual fish and chips in many, many weeks.

Friday night is Fish-and-Chip-Friday. It has been since I started university. It's my treat to end the week. But as I haven't been at home for so many Friday nights I haven't had it until this week; hence how the tartar sauces got pushed to the back.

Of course, there is a distinct irony in the idea behind fish and chips being a lazy way to start the weekend, cooked for me by someone else, and yet I use a home-made tartar sauce.

Anyhow, this week provided a dilemma: where to purchase the fish and chips from?

When I first moved into my house I used Salt-And-Vinegar. It is located very conveniently at the bottom of my road and I walk past it on my way home. Then the jolly Greek chap and his mother sold the business. And it went downhill from there.

First they stopped doing the mini-fish, so it cost me more. Then the portion sizes shrank. So I stopped going there.

I changed to go to Pappa's. Pappas was slightly closer to the train station - a little further from home - but they did a meal special, and the quality was good enough. Then the usual serving girl left and one of the owners started serving on a Friday night. If I didn't specifically ask for the special, I didn't get the special, and it would cost twice as much. Which was annoying. Then one night I went in and asked for "fish, chips and mushy peas, please" and got given a large fish, a large portion of chips and large peas at a cost well over £7. This was very annoying, particularly as I struggle to eat a mini-fish and small chips. So I stopped going there.

I went back to Salt-And-Vinegar which had changed hands again. The woman behind the counter there was lovely and I never had to specify that it was the special I wanted - she knew me, she knew my order. But she wasn't a fish and chip fryer. The first thing she did on buying the fish and chip shop was introduce 'curry Thursday'. Under the hotlamp with the fishcakes and battered jumbo sausage appeared samosas and bhajis. She didn't want a fish and chip shop, she wanted an Indian takeaway, and was trying to do it on the sly. Now that wouldn't have been too bad had she known how to cook fish and chips. The first week I went the fish had clearly been under the hotlamp for a while. It was dry and rubbery and the batter was crunchy. The next week the fish was nice but the chips hadn't been fried long enough and were still crunchy in the middle. Then it was the mushy peas - they were cold and crunchy and hadn't been left long enough to heat through. And then finally the chips were overcooked and crunchy on the outside. So I stopped going there.

At around the same time as I was developing my dissatisfaction with Salt-And-Vinegar the local newspaper ran a competition to find the best fish and chip shop around. One of the finalists was Georgio's Plaice. Do you see what Georgio did there with the name? Well, I was sold on the name alone.

It was a little further away, and a slightly different route home but the first time I turned up the queue was out of the door. the fryer was churning over vast quantities of fish, chips, sausage, everything - this was a very popular shop. And the staff were nice too. And so I was happy there. The only problem being that I had to carry my Georgio's Plaice fish and chips past the Salt-and-Vinegar shop. And the bag was very proudly emblazened with "Georgio's fish and chips" so it wasn't as though I could pretend it was something much less embarrassing like porn or drugs.

But then I had my forced leave from local fish and chips. Well, fish and chips generally - I didn't replace local fish and chips with Mancunian fish and chips or London fish and chips. Actually, London fish and chips don't exist properly. And by the time I came back, Salt-And-Vinegar had changed hands again. So I tried it out this Friday. It's not exactly a defection from Georgio's Plaice - I only went because I was being lazy and to give it a try. But it was actually quite good, if you ignore the fact that the owner serving behind the counter took five minutes to do anything. But the fish was cooked nicely, the chips perfect, and the mushy peas mushy.

Which leaves me with a huge dilemma as to what to do this Friday: where to buy my fish and chips, and which tartar sauce to use up first.