Postcard from Norfolk - Fish and Chips

One of the holiday party has announced that they are on a mission to have fish and chips every day of the holiday.

Given the enthusiastic rapture that I was in yesterday as a result of the seafood platter at the White Horse (a dish that deserves capitalisation and so will henceforth be known as the Seafood Platter), and the secret ambition I am nurturing not just to have the Seafood Platter every day but, if at all possible, every meal, I am in no position to criticise what I now consider a sound and admirable moral choice.

Because if you are going to choose to have fish and chips every day, this is the place to do it.

Fish and chips on the Norfolk coast is a single meal option with a multitude of options and varieties.  Obviously, you have your sauces, but you also have side dishes.  Well, one side dish, mushy peas.  Simply remembering there are more fish than cod in the sea that taste astonishing when battered for your pleasure makes the possibilities if not limitless, then certainly enough to fill a week.

Me?  I go for cod and chips from French’s, the best fish and chipper in the world.

This, it appears, is hardly a secret.  The queue was, literally, out the door when I arrived.  However, thanks to the experienced team working the friars, it was a moving queue and, because we were all only ten minutes away from golden battered goodness, it was a good humoured one.

It’s not just the tourists who turn up to take away here, it’s the locals too.  What I love about the take away service is that fish and chips is, more than any other food, ideally suited to being a take-away product.

Most importantly, French’s serve their fish and chips in a cardboard container.  No polystyrene here, just good, honest paper-based flatware.  What’s more, they warp them in sheets of paper to keep them warm.  What’s even more, they bag them in paper bags or, more precisely given the amount of fish and chips I was picking up, sacks.  French’s must have a paper bill just below that of a mass-market tabloid.

The benefit of all this is twofold.  Firstly, it keeps everything toasty for the journey back to the caravan, without everything going soggy in the way that using unnatural, godless packaging makes it.  Secondly, it allows the aroma to drift gently up and around the interior of the car.  This is especially wonderful of a wet winter night when, with a warm bag of fish and chips in your lap, the interior of the car slowly becomes a vinegary fug, a different variety of the atmosphere that is normally only found under duvets; warm, welcoming, comforting.

Finally, of course, one has the sauce sachets and condiment packets.  One is treated like a grown up and trusted to sauce and season one’s own whips.  The question is, one sachet of red sauce, or ten?  The supposed answer may be found in the pages of the better guides to etiquette, the actual answer is; as many as one thinks is appropriate.  We don’t judge.

Postcard from Norfolk - Cod wars? Or just chip rivalry?

It always struck me as odd that a single city could support two football clubs, and that the fans would choose one or the other when at heart it’s just eleven blokes and a ball and who the hell cares what colour top they are wearing. The exception is of course Glasgow where the decision is based on what religion you were indoctrinated into at an early age – Rangers or Celtic, which then determined what church you went to.

In Wells the rivalry is between the two quayfront fish and chips shops; French’s or Platten’s. Maybe rivalry is too strong a word, as at the end of the day choice may boil down to which has seating available if it’s raining. Platten’s is much larger inside than French’s, and has a more modern feel, some might like that but then again other prefer a more intimate setting and windows that can see steaming up as the weather outside makes sitting inside sucking on a chip seem like a terribly good idea. But this doesn’t explain the happy looking locals I kept encountering with their Platten’s fish and chip boxes, taking their take-away away, or taking it to an al fresco setting to enjoy.

The basic differences, as far as I can work it out, are this. French’s serve their fish and chips in a cardboard tray wrapped in paper. They also, and I declare an interest as a big fan and the holder of a French’s loyalty card, make the best fish and chips in the world, with traditional chunky battered fish. Platten’s serve fish and chips in a cardboard box, a bit like a smaller, taller, pizza box and their batter is smoother. Perfectly acceptable.

I like to think that there is some unwritten history here, that you’re ether a French’s man or a Platten’s man not because of your taste in battering techniques, but because of the side you took in the feud years ago where the daughter of one chip shop dynasty took up with the son of another and it all ended badly, possibly with a scuffle and a battered savaloy.

Or it may be some sort of religious thing, but I prefer to think that something happened in a traditional small town manner to establish fanatical loyalties. Mine was established the fist time I tried French’s fish and chips and assured with a card that means every tenth fish and chips is free.

Postcard from Norfolk - Fish and chip crisis

Norfolk in May is plump and green. Such succulence is quite a change from my normal visiting time of October, when it is less crowded, rates are off season and the hedgerows are thinner. Now, everything is in leaf, pumped up and big. This includes the tractors that roam the roads, pulling trailers of badly secured root vegetables ready to bounce onto your bonnet and put a dent in your metalwork and crimp in your day alike. The tractors are like rural caravans in their ability to create a tailback occasionally slowing the journey along the A road leading to passing the time with classic car games such as I spy. After three miles at twenty miles an hour following a tractor the most popular ‘I spy’ letter is cee.

The first night in Wells-next-the Sea is also the first night of the holiday and holiday rules apply, meaning that such high level decisions as ‘what shall we have for dinner’ are not the subject of prolonged consideration, debate and risk assessment but rather come supplied with an answer prepared in anticipation of such a moment: ‘fish and chips from French’s’.

In truth, fish and chips from French’s is a good meal decision at any time and actually a fairly good solution to any decision, up to and including ‘is it time to tell this person I love them, or is there something else I should be doing?’.

Rocking up at French’s, I was met with the sight of a chap standing by the door. Cooks standing by the door of their establishment is never a good sign, unless it is at the back door of the establishment and they are smoking a fag, in which case it is situation normal.

It was not situation normal. The family ahead of me turned away at the door, dad choking back rage, kids choking back tears, mum wanting to choke back Malibu. It’s never a happy sight when a family set on chips are denied same.

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

I choked back emotion. The chap could see that what he had on his doorstep was his worst nightmare, a bloke who was not going to explode into violence but rather burst into wracking sobs. He tried to justify this gross violation of my human rights.

‘Sorry. We’re reopening again at eight, but we’ve got one hundred and fifty schoolkids to cater for and if we don’t shut, we won’t get the order done.’

This was, I conceded, fair enough. If you had been dragged around all day in the rain on an ‘educational’ trip that began and ended with a trip in a coach with a load of other kids smelling mostly of anorak bad hygiene, it would take a harder heart than mine to begrudge the kids a fish supper.

Of course, the wait made our anticipation even keener.

Eight o’clock on the dot I was walking through that front door, no queue, straight to the counter. French’s still do the best fish and chips in the world. One hundred and fifty school kids can’t be wrong.