Time warp: The dining room is much the same as it was on opening in 1958
(Picture: Adrian Lourie)Getting recognised in a restaurant is just something I have had to steadily adjust to. Servers widen their eyes in alarm; chefs emerge from the kitchen to deliver dish introductions freighted with unspoken tension. It can be strange and awkward. It is also a very minor hazard in the context of what remains an almost obnoxiously jammy and privileged job.
But at The Fryer’s Delight, a storied, 54-year-old fish and chip shop in Holborn, I have never felt happier to see that flicker of recognition on someone’s face, though I wasn’t being clocked for this column or TV or anything to do with restaurant criticism at all. No, I was being spotted as a long-lapsed regular; the guy who worked over the road and would duck in for a takeaway chip butty, a vinegar-doused fish cake or, in times of especially pronounced hangover, an enormous portion of sausage in batter and chips that would reliably prompt an acute mix of both horror and jealousy in an open-plan office.
“I remember you,” said Osvaldo ‘Ozzy’ Bartolo, Portugal-born, long-term co-proprietor of this place, bringing cups of tea to our booth. There is a specific sort of warm, world-steadying fondness that can build up over the years between relative strangers on opposing sides of the counter. And, as it would turn out, the theme of comforting familiarity would be an appropriate one for my return trip to this exemplar of a newly endangered British culinary institution.
It was concerning recent headlines that had brought me back. Thanks to spiking energy bills and the knock-on effect of the war in Ukraine on the global supply of Russian whitefish, the chippy is uniquely imperilled. Cod is getting prohibitively expensive to source; several shops a week are going out of business. “It’s getting harder and harder,” said Ozzy — who took over the place from its original Italian owners in 1998, alongside his brother-in-law João ‘Joe’ Magalhães — shaking his head. “But we have our regulars.” They really do, as evidenced less than an hour after opening by one or two smartly attired, lone old boys, methodically making their way through fish suppers. And the other two things the Fryer’s has, are its singular room — an immaculately preserved time warp of chequerboard floor, red and teal formica and wood-panelling, soundtracked by the roiling spatter of the fryers — and food with the subtle majesty of somewhere not content to be a museum exhibit.
If places like this disappear, it will be a different sort of fuel crisis
Pickled cucumber prompted a dumb grin: a slug-green whopper, store-bought but nicely sharp and charmingly sliced like a briny hassleback. Haddock, with a glistening hull of yielding, golden batter, may have lacked the dramatically craggy, echoing crunch of some specimens but it had what can be a rarity: actual, adroitly seasoned fish flavour. Mushy peas provided a comfortingly bland, vegetal backbeat. And then there were the chips: heftily cut, fried to order, and each delivering a fine-crisped, subtly sweet pleasure-jolt that you keep chasing long after the point of fullness.
Naturally, there are downsides to such a determinedly old school approach. A metal gravy boat of thin, overly sweetened curry sauce; roast chicken that was dry and pappy enough to reaffirm why no sane person orders it in a chippy. But even The Fryer’s more limited moments have a guileless charm and purity of intent. The narrow parameters of its excellence — not to mention the fact it is still around £10 for a huge meal — is what has allowed it to endure as a beacon of cheap sustenance, beloved by international students and cabbies alike. If places like this disappear, it will be a different sort of fuel crisis.
We paid up (amazingly, it is cash only), said goodbye to Ozzy and Joe as more fish went spluttering into hot oil, and walked out beyond delivery riders massing outside the Korean corndog place that has recently materialised next door. Time drifts on; the city changes all around us. And yet, happily, The Fryer’s Delight is still just about bubbling away.
