Are Fish and Chips worth it?

£22 here (Surrey) for 2 cod and chips. The portions are huge. I freeze left over chips and reheat them from frozen (200C for about 10 mins) - fantastic. Worth the money.

This is the very good and high quality fish and chip shop in our town (fish is landed a few miles away from the shop). £9.30 gets you two small fish and chips, that feeds DD & I, DH and DS usually get that to share plus a portion of scampi between them. Worth the drive and good value.

In the Old Days, when I were a lass, chippies used beef dripping in the fryers. This reaches a higher temperature than vegetable oils, making for crisp batter and chips - lovely! I find the vegetable oil can't make them crispy, it seems to leave them flabby/soggy and frankly not as nice to eat

@WhereYouLeftIt thats so true. Proper Irish chippers (the Italian ones) use beef dripping hence why everything is so bloody delicious. We were visiting DHs cousin in York and got some fish and chips one evening. They were very nice but missing that distinctive taste that can only be gotten from tallow. She said it’s not as popular to use it anymore on the UK

Family of five here and a round of fish and chips is about £50 now. We have it less often than we use to buy them. I'm not sure how much it would have to be, to be not worth it at all.

One of our local chippies fries everything in lard - it tastes so much better than all the others. Again, not cheap though, but we only have takeaway as a very occasional treat, so i don't mind.

The good one up the road from us certainly is.

The crap one down the road from us certainly isn't.

Difficult to see how that helps you, really. Or how any answer could.

If they are cooked the traditional way, in beef tallow then yes they are worth it. But 95% of chippies fry in cheap, nasty, rancid vegetable oil which is terrible for our bodies. Paying extortionate prices for disgusting cheap food basically.

A single portion of fish and chips with mushy peas, curry sauce and tartare sauce is £19.80 from our nearest “chippy”. And that’s their meal deal price! It’s not much less to buy a single portion of fish and a single portion of chips. It is fish and chips perfection though. TBF it is more of a restaurant.

There are cheaper places but the food is nowhere near as good.

IMO the expensive ones are worth the price their charge but the cheap ones aren’t. I would rather pay £20 (once in a blue moon) for something high quality that is better than I can make than £10 for something I won’t especially enjoy that I can make better.

You are correct that fish and chips is no longer a cheap meal though.

Used to be very worth it but after paying £55 for 3 people recently I'm not going to bother.

Chip shop fish and chips is the best.... I really miss that now I don't live on the UK. Home made is not the same

I'd pay about half of that for the same at my local chippy, and its bloody lovely.

Definately worth the money for me, and cheaper than pretty much any other kind of takeaway

Same here. A lovely chippy with very good quality fish n chips has recently closed although it was quite popular. In place of it is an Indian/Balti restaurant/takeaway. I am wondering how they can make a go of it but the chippy can't?

To be honest, I feel this about fish generally. The chippie is lovely, but they can't maintain it as a cheap and cheerful takeaway, I'm sure.

I'm always horrified at what it costs to buy fish, even just in the supermarket. I get 4 small fillets (about 120g each) for about £10 or more. We have one of those fish market vans that comes to our high street once a week. Really great fish. But to do cod from him for three of us cost me something like £24 last time. I haven't done it again.

My OH owns a very good and popular fish and chip shop so I am biased but the rising costs mean he is struggling to make a living now and he doesn’t know how much longer shops like his will survive.
Instead of a cheap takeaway it will be an expensive treat from the few ones that manage to survive.

We have 2 very good ones indeed in Bath - owned by the same person and award winning - but at around £32 it's an occasional thing and then I always think - I feel stuffed and sluggish -not sure I like that feeling much these days. Even if it's top rated ones in places from Whitby to Weymouth I still feel the same - the idea is nicer than the reality -I actually enjoy a beer battered fresh one from Waitrose with some potato croquettes or triple cooked frozen chips , tartar sauce and a can of mushy peas more at around £8 for 2

Whitby has the best fish & chips 😀

Fishing can be dangerous. I'm not surprised it's expensive these days.

I expect good quality fish decently cooked which isn't always the way so the chippy needs to be good. There's none near me 😞

Same here mrsm43s. We have a van that visits our village - we recently got 2 regular cod and chips for us, a chicken nuggets and chips for our daughter, plus 3 small curry sauce and it came to £45. I nearly wept when DH returned home with the bag of food. I don't think he'll ever recover from being asked to part with that much for chips.

Omg! Where are you?

I think it’s worth it. Our local chip shop is pretty good but no way I could eat a large fish and chips, I usually order 2 fish and one portion of chips (regular)for dd and I, it’s usually around £16 ish. I think as a treat it’s worth it.

Yes, I have a really good one near my house; the other ones I have tried are not good. We buy 2 for 4; otherwise is too much food.

I do get disappointed many times when I eat out these days; mostly average food at a extortionate prices. A few are worthy though.

I remember reading a longread article in the Guardian a year or two back about the difficulties of fish and chip shops https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/jul/20/a-funeral-for-fish-and-chips-east-neuk-fife-anstruther-scotland

Where are you based? I just priced it up at my local chippy and two large fish, two large portions of chips and one large pot of peas is £12.40.

Alternatively you can get large fish,chips peas in one for £5.20 each.

I’m in the north west.

We have a great chippy it would be a couple of quid cheaper than yours and the large fish supper has two large fish fillets in it and a generous portion of chips (realistically it is enough for two people), we don't have one often perhaps 2-3 times a year, as going to the shop, waiting in the queue, then rushing home to keep them hot takes a good hour, but when we do it is usually a nice treat.

Ocado/M&S do this Gastro Haddock for £11, we had it today, two big pieces of fish which we did in the airfryer (the batter was very crisp and golden) and it came with two little pots of delicious minted pea puree. I thought it very good value and just as good as a fish shop's.

It doesn't come with chips though (the ones in the picture are a 'serving suggestion' 😉) and I missed them! I absolutely LOVE chips from a chip shop, nothing else comes close (especially not the abomination that is 'oven chips' 😖 but for the reasons given by pps, fish and chips has become very expensive lately (about £23 here.)