CHIPPY THAT TIME FORGOT!
Fish is fried on a coal-fired range, batter recipe is 70 years old and it opens only SIX hours a week. Welcome to the ...
IN the historic town of Gainsborough, the Upton Fish and Chip Shop is definitely the plaice to be.
And that’s been the case since the day it opened in 1948.
Seventy years on, fish is still fried in beef dripping with the same secret batter recipe.
The same coal-fired cooking range is in use and fresh potatoes are washed and peeled with the same ‘rumbler’ before being chopped with the same hand-operated chipper.
But if you fancy a visit, beware. The north Lincolnshire chippy is open for only six hours in total on a Friday evening and Saturday lunchtime (one fewer day than the original post-war routine).
Service is friendly, although relatively slow due to reliance on the single traditional fryer with a capacity to cook 15 standard fish at a time. But the customers love it.
During the summer months they come in droves, queueing out the door and down the road, patiently waiting for the fish and chips from heaven. No one complains and customers are said to enjoy another bygone art – making conversation.
Opening hours are 5pm-8.30pm on Friday and 11am-1.30pm on Saturday. Chips are £1.50 while regular-sized portion of cod is £4.30 and mushy peas 80p.
Current owner Sally Shaw, 45, who works as a PA at a local company for the rest of the week, bought the business at auction in 2005. Situated in an old-fashioned brick building, the 70 sq ft premises look and feel like a post-war relic.
But she has reaped the benefits of stick- ing to the same time-honoured methods, using the same machinery, as the founder Kathleen Longden.
She said: ‘I never get to see how many people are outside from behind the counter, but customers will get to the front and say “we have been in the queue for over an hour tonight”. It is a regular thing, if someone tells me they have been queueing for half an hour I cheekily tell them that doesn’t sound too bad.
‘It has become a bit of a social event. People bring their camping chairs and sit and have a chat while waiting. I think the customers like it as it lets them catch up with friends and it is a bit of a weekly event.’
Customers come on foot, by bike and car – and some even fly in from far afield, landing in a private plane at a local airfield.
Janet Gillespie, 74, is the longestserving staff member having worked there for more than half a century.
She said the same hand-made batter recipe and beef dripping combine to give the fish and chips a ‘unique taste’, adding: ‘The batter is fluffier too...’ Only the pans that the food is cooked in are of the modern variety, she said.
Looking back on the thousands of hours she has worked – doing exactly the same job on the same equipment – she said: ‘I have enjoyed every single minute. The customers are all fantastic, they are like friends to me. I have never heard a bad word or complaint about the shop. We treat everybody exactly the same whether they have been coming for ever or it is their first time. Some customers come every week and many have been coming for decades.’
Mrs Gillespie, who has also worked at a village shop and an egg factory, said working at Upton was ‘the best decision I ever made ... I have such a passion for it. I will carry on working here until I get thrown out, I will never leave’.
Comments from customers on the review website Tripadvisor support the boasts of success.
They include: ‘Best chippy in the world. All of their food is always first class. Be warned though, you might have to queue for some time.’ Another commented: ‘Worth every single yard of the 60-mile round trip for these. Unbelievably brilliant.’
‘Customers bring camping chairs’