People across Merseyside will be queueing up outside their favourite local chippies for fish and chips today for Good Friday.
It’s popular to eat fish on the Friday of the Easter weekend and the huge queues we will see at chippies across the region today shows many families still follow this national tradition. But it's also the busiest day of the year for many Merseyside chip shops.
Through the years, many of these family businesses have been at the heart of our communities, with the next generation taking on established chippies or branching off to start their own. On a day like Good Friday, we also think back to our favourite chippies that have now been confined to history.
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It may seem unique to many, but generations of families across the region have grown up in and around chip shops, from living above the sites as youngsters to having their first ever job helping out their parents. Sometimes referred to as 'chippy kids' or 'takeaway kids,' there are other families across the region and beyond with similar experiences.
Here, we speak to a number of families who have grown up in the industry to hear their memories of life growing up in Liverpool chip shops, from current owners to past businesses.
The Good Catch
Today, the Pittaras siblings behind a popular chippy chain are carrying on their family's tradition in the industry. Renowned for serving traditional fish and chips across Merseyside, The Good Catch has shops in Great Homer Street, Crosby, Formby and Litherland.
Siblings Michelle Fairclough, Alison Mattravers, Christopher Pittaras, and Robert Pittaras, are the faces behind the business and picked up their expertise from their parents and grandparents. Their grandfather opened his first chippy on Soho Street, Liverpool in 1962, with The Good Catch opening their first two shops in Greater Manchester around 13 years ago, before branching out across Merseyside.
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Robert, 35, is the youngest of the siblings and said the family used to live above one of their chip shops in Liverpool, but that he mainly remembers life in their Litherland site. Robert told the ECHO: "The shop I have good memories from was the shop we had on Sefton Road in Litherland and that was called K&L Pittarus - my dad is called Kipros and my mum is called Lorna - but that’s where I learnt my trade.
"I used to get the bus from school when I was about 12 or 13 to peel the potatoes and tray fish and stuff like that. When we were off I was always around the place, just helping out what I could, I was learning from quite a young age. I looked up to my big brother and I just loved being in his company."
Robert said what he loved the most about growing up in the family business was being together as a family and that the only negative he could find was "bringing home the smell of grease on your clothes." He said: "We were always there together, me, my dad, our Chris, sometimes my mum. My sisters didn't work there as often because they were studying, they have degrees but me and Chris were there straight from school.
"But also to be able to eat fish and chips as and when we want it. We had a chef, we used to call him Mr Man and he was famous in Litherland, everyone knew him, he was like an uncle to us kids. His food, along with my dad's fish and chips, his Chinese meals were famous, that’s what brought the customers in."
As a kid, Robert remembered the days of his dad smoking behind the counter, like many business owners did and as a teen Robert wearing Nike tracksuits, LFC tops and trainers to work, a contrast to the workwear staff at The Good Catch wore when they first set up.
As a kid, Robert said he was proud growing up in his family chip shop and that his dad always had a good reputation in the area. He said: "It was all positive, people can sometime stick their nose up at people working in the chippy but for me, that was never the case.
"A lot of my friends when I was younger, not many 12 or 13 year olds had a job, so I was proud of it. My dad was dead good at what he did, he had a very successful shop."
Lee's Chip Shop
This traditional Liverpool chippy that served its customers for 30 years is still remembered to this day as being the 'best around.' Despite the chip shop changing hands over 20 years ago after its owners retired, people still remember the "delicious" food they still haven't tasted anything as good since.
The chip shop was Lee's which opened on Mill Street in Dingle in 1969. For three decades they served locals with traditional English and Chinese meals before Mr Lee and his wife, Rose, retired in 1999.
Their children, Andrew and Vivien, remember growing up and working in the chip shop through the 1970s and '80s. Andrew, 40, told the ECHO: "We opened 11.30am till 1.30pm, then closed and opened 4.30pm til 7pm everyday accept Wednesday's and Sunday's.
"Our family, we kind of fitted lunch and dinner around these times and my mum would always find a way to cook a fresh meal everyday, I don't really know how she did it. Our father would be out front every morning waiting for the Holland's pies to deliver and in the evening my mum would be working from around 10.30pm preparing the fish cakes for the next day by hand as well."
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Andrew said his older sister helped in the shop more growing up and that he would be based upstairs focusing on his studies. He said: "Very occasionally if we were short staffed that day I would carry huge bags of potatoes or food out to be wrapped and served.
"In that environment, I'd occasionally have to sweep up when the shop was closed in the afternoon or the evening. Everyone knew everyone.
"When I'd come home from school or from a friends while the shop was open, to get to the back are of the chip shop where my parents were, all the customers would be standing in the waiting area and I'd squeeze past the and duck under the upper half of the door to get back into the chip shop. Because I was quite a tall kid that would be a little bit of a squeeze."
Andrew said looking back, in some ways his childhood was unique as friends or class mates didn't grow up around a family business, but that he was also able to be like any other kid. Andrew said: "In other ways you had a fairly normal childhood, you could play out in the street. It was all the things you'd want from a childhood really.
"Looking back, you realise what an impact my parents had on the community. As a chip shop, we didn't accept phone orders so all the interactions with customers were face to face and partly because of that, they still get recognised by former customers all over the city."
Chris's Chippy
Chris's in Mossley Hill has been serving generations of loyal customers for over half a century. Opened by husband and wife Chris and Christine Moustoukas, the Rose Lane business has been going since 1967 and was one of the first takeaways in Liverpool to start offering Chinese dishes.
Originally from Cyprus, the couple came to England in the 1950s and worked in London before moving to Liverpool and buying the shop from Chris' brother, Steve. Chris's is now run by Tony and Costa Moustoukas, the second generation sons of this chippy dynasty.
Costa, 59, told the ECHO: "Me and my siblings, we grew up on top of the chippy. It was very very small, we only had a small shop but it was refurbished last year. Back in the day, upstairs, everyone was living there, it was only a three bedroom.
"I just remember having a tin bath, there was no bathroom up there and the toilet was an outside toilet. It was obviously tough, but it was nice, it was happy times.
"It's an unusual situation to be in, living on top of a chippy and the whole family living there, but it was all happy memories."
Costa remembers helping out around the shop - even during school lunchtimes. He said: "When I was in high school, I used to go Quarry Bank school, Calderstones, and I used to walk down with all my school mates in the lunchtimes because it was only down the road.
"They all used to tag along and used to come down and serve them. We'd get our dinners and walk up again, that was good."
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As a kid, Costa said one of the best things about growing up in a chippy was the "large option of food to eat" and being able to pop downstairs and "grab whatever you wanted. Costa also remembers a community of other "chippy kids" growing up in similar family businesses, with many living above their shops before moving into other homes.
He said: "There is a big community of us going back. The Greek chippies in Liverpool, a lot of them come from a few different villages in Cyprus, either our village or a few of the neighbouring villages. My dads cousins or mum mums brothers and sisters, we used to visit them over the water or they used to visit so it was nice to get together."
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