Some of the amazing things you can get in chip shops around the UK and Ireland

As an emigrant scouser now living in King’s Landing London, I’ve had to sacrifice a certain quality of life.

Boozers close at 2am and Home Bargains (née Home and Bargain) apparently hasn’t made its way south yet. Mostly, one learns to adapt and accept that civilisation is a slow process.

One forgone home comfort that may just be a bridge too far, however, is the culinary scene down here. Specifically, I’m talking about the state of the chip shops ('chippy' to me, if not to thee). Where I’m from, we’re accustomed to being able to find traditional fish and chips AND Chinese food all under the same roof. I’m also used to putting curry sauce or gravy on my chips and would imagine most people in a first world country would accept that as standard. Not in London.

It's supposed to be the capital of the world and you can’t even get a Singapore rice, saveloy and curry sauce all in the same gaff. Here are just some of the other regional fish and chip delicacies that tragically haven’t made their way to London yet…

Orange chips: the midlands

Orange chips aren’t some horrible merger between Tropicana and McCain's. They’re so-called because they’re dipped in an orange coloured batter, before being fried. What makes the batter orange? I don’t know. Some things deserve to remain mysterious. What I do know is that the end result is one seriously crunchy, crackly, mouth-watering chip. These delicious morsels were developed in the Black Country to break the monotony of wartime and have been enjoyed across the region ever since.

The Yorkshire fishcake: Yorkshire

We’re all familiar with the concept of the fishcake, no? And, I’d imagine, we all know what a potato scallop is. Well, the Yorkshire fishcake is a marriage of the two, where the fish is the filling and the potato the bread in this deep fried cousin of the sandwich family. Best served with... er, chips.

Smack barm pea wet: Wigan

To an outsider visiting Wigan - home to the annual World Pie-Eating Championship and famous for being a heartland of Northern Soul (a quick aside: I wonder how many chippies in Wigan have gone with the pun 'Northern Sole'?) I’d imagine it might be a bit of a shock to walk into a chip shop and see 'smack' on the menu for under a quid. Has the proprietor devised some ingenious and evil stratagem to keep customers coming back? You’ll be glad to learn though that 'smack', in this instance, has nothing to do with narcotics. It’s an equally moreish (so I hear) dish of battered, fried potato. Isn’t that the sales pitch for chips, you ask? Well, no, this is just a big old slice of potato, un-diced.

As for pea-wet – this is the sort-of discharge that comes off of mushy peas, which, as you’ll see above, in Wigan, they use as a condiment. Which rather begs the question, “what do they do with the rest of the stuff”?

Oh, and, in case you’re wondering, no, your eyes do not deceive you and yes, that is a pie INSIDE a barm/teacake/bap/whatever you want to call it…

Pea fritter: origins unknown

People are clever, aren’t they? Battered peas. My own investigations haven’t been able to tell me exactly where this one derives from, but it’s certainly not available on all menus and clearly takes a delicate hand to craft…

White pudding supper: Ireland/Scotland

Think black pudding, except for pig’s blood, substitute pig meat and fat, suet, bread and oatmeal, all rolled up into a big ol’ deep-fried sausage…

Rag pudding/rag-pie: Oldham

Minced meat and onions cooked in a suet pastry, then cooked in cheesecloth. Doesn’t that make it taste of cheese? Yup, sometimes. Yum.

Pizza crunch: Glasgow

The pizza crunch's name evokes the eating experience quite nicely. Up in Glasgow, they don’t mess about. Anything you can batter, they’ll batter better. I spent a lot of my youth in Glasgow and can attest to the power of the pizza crunch. I also once had a night out in Glasgow for the sole purpose of getting oiled enough to eat one of these. If you really want an authentic experience, wash down with a bottle of Irn Bru.

Saveloy dip: north east…

Everyone knows it’s difficult to photograph fast food, but this image is particularly repulsive. Not quite as adventurous as it sounds and hopefully not as disgusting as it looks, this north east staple is a smoked sausage sandwich which is dipped in gravy or fat, before being bedded in stuffing, mustard and pease pudding (a local spread made from split peas).

Haggis supper: Scotland

Perfect if you’re entertaining friends for Burns Night. Even sheep stomach, it turns out, is made palatable once you stick it in a deep fat fryer and batter the blighter to bits…

Scraps: Leeds

'Scraps' describes exactly what it refers to. They’re basically the bits of batter that have fallen off from your fish in the deep fat fryer and, ever since the dawn of time, they’ve been available free to anyone who asked for them.

You can imagine the disquiet with which locals received news that one chippery was planning to start putting chilli flakes on them and flogging ‘em for £2 a bag. I won’t name the establishment for fear of libel, but you know who you are…

Cod roe: Weston-Super-Mare

This might look like your standard fishcake, but what lurks inside is actually a dish made from the ripe internal egg masses of fish or sea urchin ovaries. Mmmmmm.

Mint sauce on mushy peas: Nottingham

This is a bit 'gastropub' for my tastes, but apparently, they can’t get enough of it in Nottingham…

Deep-fried Mars bar: Scotland

No list of weird things you can get in chip shops would ever be complete without this nightmarish invention. It’s the classic “why did they ever need to deep fry that?” example. Other brands are also available (see deep fried Twix, deep fried Snickers, etc).