Meat is not to be consumed on a Friday – Jesus died on a Friday. And there you are, settling in to feast on roast venison and red wine? Gluttony is a sin, FYI. You must understand that Friday is for asceticism. But Roman Catholics are an enterprising people. And so in the spirit of penitence they catch and kill fish, cover it in batter, submerge it in a vat of boiling fat, and serve it with a side of chips covered in salt and vinegar. Nice loophole you got there, but we all know it’s not exactly what God had in mind when he made modesty a Christian virtue.
No, there is nothing goddamn abstinent about fish and chips. The grease, the oil, the calories, the spiritual distance from anything resembling a vegetable garden. As lunch goes, it is about as indulgently baroque as one can get – don’t be fooled by the fact that it is served in a parsimonious paper bag under fluorescent lamps, flung at you by a matronly woman and inhaled, often, on the side of a road. That it has become the national dish of this uptight and Protestant island is, well, nothing short of a miracle (wahey!).
I am thinking about it today as a heatwave encroaches and “summer” no longer feels like a distant, fantastical concept. Fish and chips, you see, are to be consumed in the summer – just as boeuf bourguignon is January fare, eggs belong to pre-noon hours, and Caravaggio is to be perceived only in Rome. Ideally, battered fish should also be eaten in view of the sea. Some people get very worthy about that. But it is a principle born of pre-Industrial Revolution anxieties. We have fridges now, and as such, that diktat should be relegated to mere advice.
And so, off I go in search of London’s offering. Rule number one for anyone considering a similar quest is to never order F&C in a chain pub. It exists as a menu item for American tourists and people with bad taste. You might be better off digging a tuna carcass out of a bin and tossing it in some warm vegetable oil than settling for whatever [franchise redacted] is capable of rustling up. I choose the indie Fish Central in EC1 – charmed by the sheer literalism of the name. On my way I walk past a pan-Asian spot called – get this – Eat House.
Boring people will tell you they like Fish Central because it is “authentic”, “proper old east London”, when really they are too embarrassed to say “working class”. I like Fish Central because – alongside the battered cod and mushy peas and typical F&C accoutrements – it also serves lobster, oysters and grilled Dover sole. It is spiritually confused: trad caff (there is a large group of men drinking builder’s tea to my right) and restauranty (well, not quite but there is a wine list). I order battered pollock and feel very pious indeed.
Pollock is not much to look at, and much less to chew on. So unfashionable is the creature that in 2009 Sainsbury’s briefly renamed the fish “colin” in a bid to boost sales (it’s more eco-friendly than draining the ocean of every last cod). I will shock you by revealing that this marketing wheeze didn’t work, and the name never stuck. But the pollock in front of me is good – as good as pollock can be.
It’s the chips I can’t abide. Chefs by and large attempt to honour the laws of thermodynamics. But the great British “chippy” missed that memo. How else to explain the shape, size, texture and overall success of this style? These things are teleologically designed to fail: fried at a lower-than-average temperature and then left to go cold and soggy by inhaling their own steam. And what of the typical Maris Piper potato? On the eighth day, the Lord said let there be starch?
I blame no part of this tradition on Fish Central – a weird, charming, friendly place. I am happy to use more effusive adjectives here, too. No, the “chip” is an act of hubris on behalf of the entire nation of Britain. To take the unimprovable French fry, moderate it into this flaccid mess, and hawk it to tourists? Holiday-makers? You and me? That really is against God.
[Further reading: Istanbul: the fish is better than the infrastructure]
