Eat Drink Hong Kong

Fridays were special days when I was a kid. We used to get off school fifteen minutes earlier so we’d go and play footy in the park for a while. There were no mobile phones back then, some of us didn’t even have land lines yet, but so long as we were home before dad, nobody minded.

On Fridays being home before dad was not a problem. On Fridays dad used to stop off at the chippy on the way home. I can never forget the blast of cold air accompanied by the warm smell of well wrapped fish and chips as he opened the front door. Mum already had the plates warming in the kitchen.

This was where the weekend began, dad was home, there was no school tomorrow and there was a plate of fish and chips warming my knees as we watched the telly. We were only allowed to have dinner in front of the telly on Fridays.

A few years later the chippy would be the last place I stopped at after a Friday night out. On a student budget a piece of cod was just a bit too expensive so I would often have a saveloy with chips.

I had my first saveloy in over twenty years the other evening. After college I moved to London. Saveloys were rare in London chippies so they slipped from my diet altogether.

This most recent saveloy I discovered, appropriately, in The Chippy. But whereas in England ‘the chippy’ is a generic term for a place that sells fish and chips, in Hong Kong it is at 51 Wellington Street. Though the entrance is around the corner on Pottinger behind all the fancy dress stalls.

It does a good job of looking like an authentic chippy. Plain white walls with just a touch of blue here and there. The menu is chalked up on a blackboard at one end and there are some tables squeezed into a narrow space between the counter and the outside wall.

I ordered the classic cod and chips ($95) to accompany my saveloy ($35 as a side order) and a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale ($45). There are plenty of other things on the menu; pies, pasties, Cumberland sausage, battered sausage or chicken. They can all be served with either chips or mash and with a choice of mushy peas, beans or salad. The fish options include cod, haddock and sole.

My piece of fish was firm, flaky and fresh, and cooked in a light, crispy batter. The chips were hand cut and actually tasted of potatoes rather than the oil they were cooked in.

Apart from a few places that sold banana fritters I don’t recall much else in the line of dessert from the chippies of my youth. The Chippy have addressed this by offering the iconic Scottish delicacy, the deep fried Mars Bar ($45). Here it is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The Mars bar itself is sweet and gooey but you knew that anyway. The sweetness tends to overwhelm the taste of the batter. The batters main job, it seems, is merely to seal it in long enough to melt but not leak. Although mine was still a little firm in the middle.

The problem with Mars bars generally is that they are fine for the first few bites then I get bored with them. The same can be said for the deep fried variety, they need to be shared.