Across Britain today, hundreds of thousands of us will tuck into one of the world’s most perfect dishes. Crispy batter encasing flaky fish; a steaming pile of chips, some soft, some crunchy, some large, some merely a scrap; acidic condiments and sides to balance the salt and fat.
Yet the Michelin-starred chef Dominic Chapman, of eponymous restaurant in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, caused a stir last week by claiming in an interview with Restaurant magazine that fish and chips – specifically “from a fish and chip shop” – was his most overrated food. Chapman didn’t provide a reason, but the dish is by no means ubiquitously loved. Writing in the Guardian a few years back, the journalist Alexi Duggins called it “a dreadful, dreadful” meal and a “conceptual disaster”. To many it’s a grease-on-grease, mush-on-mush assault on our digestion.
