I swing back over to Chippy today to try out their fish & chips. A couple minutes after I placed my order for the Beer Battered Fish, I noticed that the sign said "12 pieces" (for only S$4.45 or US$2.60), upon which I realized that this wasn't really fish & chips, but rather small pieces akin to fish sticks. Indeed, once I got this little baggy, they had skewers sticking into it (like the Taiwanese shop next door). To take it another step further, the whole bag effused of white pepper, which only further seemed to taste like Taiwanese chicken and reinforce my belief that this was mildly localized.
What made it even weirder was when I bit into some of these pieces, they tasted like potatoes. Only then did I realize that the fries were battered just like the fish (and hence being nearly indistingushable from the fish on the outside, given the small sizes of the fish sticks). They weren't even really fries; they were more like battered mashed potatoes, if there were such a thing.
Well, I can't honestly speak with much authority on fish & chips as I've never really spent any extended period of time in England, but this sure seems localized to me (their website has a UK domain name but the online menu posts prices in Singapore dollars). And to be fair, I do like the taste of white pepper, so I actually still enjoyed it. I'm not quite sure about the other things on the menu (like the "Triple C" Cheesy Curry Chicken) though.
6 comments:
Chippy's fish & chips is actually pretty good. Especially with the vinegar on it. And you have to have some authenticity to make fried Mars bars - that's definitely not a localised dish.
And the cheesy curry chicken is my favourite dish there at the moment.
Well, from what I understand, in Scotland, they will fry the entire Mars bar in one go; here, they break it up into bite sized pieces and throw in some ice cream while you're at it.
Similarly, all my fish and chips experiences in England have been huge pieces of fish and proper chips wrapped in paper rather than skinny strips of fish with skewers in a bag. I'm pretty sure that heavy dose of white pepper wasn't an option provided in England either. Can anyone please verify?
Can't verify on fish adn chips (not a big fan myself...)
I do want to say I checked out that Persian place you mentioned (Kaboodieh? (sp?))
You remember how you mentioned the 2nd time you went there it wasn't all that great.
Don't worry, it's a fluke. It was awesome tonight and my girl liked it very much (She was all "How did you find this?!?")
Thanks man. :)
You mean these guys, right? I'm glad it worked out well for you. I just went for my third meal there last night and it was quite a disappointment again: the kebabs were unevenly broiled (and had a strange texture to them) while the rice was soggy. At least they were open late, but I was a bit bummed at how inconsistent they can be.
Tried the new chippy takeaway outlet in Raffles City marketplace yesterday.. the cheesy chicken is a letdown, no curry taste at all and would have been tasteless if not for the cheese sauce (which was barely enough for the chicken)
I'm a Singaporean studying in the UK, and I can say with authority that the food at Chippy's has definitely been localised. Not that it's neccessarily a bad thing (I don't really love the fish and chips here), but it's definitely different.
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