Restaurants

50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1

20 Bedford & Strand
Head to the basement room of this wine bar for a bistro menu of competently cooked French classics. The fries are skinny – julienne rather than shoestring or matchstick for you chip anoraks out there – and double-fried in sunflower oil. A two-hour soak in water precedes the cooking. Bedford & Strand’s chefs recommend buying unwashed potatoes (the dirt helps keep them fresher) and choosing a high-quality variety such as Maris Piper.
Bedford & Strand, 1a Bedford St, WC2E 9HD (020 7836 3033) Covent Garden tube or Charing Cross tube/rail.

19 Junction Tavern
Kentish Town has no shortage of pubs offering good grub, but this is one of the best. There’s a pleasant garden with tables for dining at the rear, an atmospheric front bar and dining room cosily lined with dark wood, and a conservatory. The chips, like the cuisine, are big and chunky. The kitchen uses Maris Pipers, leaving the skins on, and part-cooks the chips in water before double-frying them in vegetable oil. Just the thing to enjoy with the Junction’s impressive list of beers, which features guest ales from Edinburgh right down to Cornwall.
Junction Tavern, 101 Fortess Rd, NW5 1AG (020 7485 9400) Kentish Town tube/rail or Tufnell Park tube. Feature continues

18 Canteen
Canteen chefs hand-peel their Maris Pipers, then double-fry them in vegetable oil for great colour and crunch. A little fine sea salt provides the seasoning and, if you want more, enjoy them with the home-made tartare sauce, mayonnaise or even piccalilli. Can’t get to Spitalfields? There’s a new branch on the South Bank.
Canteen, 2 Crispin Place, off Brushfield St, E1 6DW (0845 686 1122) Liverpool St tube/rail.

17 Fryer’s Delight
Beloved of cabbies and many Time Out readers, Fryer’s Delight is a thoroughly traditional caff with unpretentious food, honest prices and 1950s canteen-style decor – everything a chippy should be. The thick chips fried in beef dripping live long in the memory, and the smell lingers long on your clothes. You can pick up cod and chips for £6, making it perfect for a lunchtime guilty pleasure.
Fryer’s Delight, 19 Theobald’s Rd, WC1X 8SL (020 7405 4114) Holborn tube.

16 Fish House NEW!
Gabriel Early and Jo Nylander, formerly of Bethnal Green’s popular Approach Tavern, are behind this exciting new Victoria Park chippy, first reviewed in TO 1924. The double-fried chips are very fine indeed – fluffy within but firmer on the outside – and they have spent a great deal of time getting them just-so. In the colder months, they used Maris Pipers and Desiree, and have just moved onto Maris Bard, a white-skinned, white-fleshed variety with a new potato taste.

‘We were tempted to use dripping, but modern times being what they are, we thought that might put a lot of people off,’ says Early. ‘Dripping burns at a higher temperature than oil, so the fat can be even hotter for frying, but it is saturated fat. Groundnut is a healthier, cleaner oil that also gives a nice result.’

He favours a smooth curry sauce to accompany their chips but has had trouble sourcing a good brand in catering-quantities for the Fish House. ‘Our new discovery is onion vinegar. It’s not, as I first thought, the vinegar from pickled onions, but a non-brewed condiment. I’ve started eating it myself and had to quickly stop because it was so good.’
Fish House, 126-128 Lauriston Rd, E9 7LH (020 8533 3327) Mile End tube then 277 bus.

15 fish!kitchen
Despite its all-lower-case logo with now-dated exclamation mark, fish!kitchen is attached to veteran fishmonger Jarvis. It also has heritage in the shape of owner Tony Allen, who supplied the restaurant trade with seafood for many years before setting up the fish! chain. Here, the golden, grease-free chips are big and fat, made with fresh seasonal potatoes that are cut on the premises. Double-frying in vegetable oil is the favoured technique.
fish!kitchen, 58 Coombe Rd, Kingston, Surrey KT2 7AF (020 8546 2886) Norbiton rail or 57, 85, 213 bus.

14 Little Bay
Who’d have thought a chain of budget restaurants would be the ones to specialise in chips cooked in goose fat? Little Bay’s branches in Battersea, Farringdon and Fulham do. The potatoes (always red varieties, though these change seasonally) are peeled by hand, leaving a soupçon of skin, then thick cut for a rustic taste and appearance. Before service, the chips are cooked in vegetable oil at a low temperature, then when the orders come through to the kitchen they are fried in goose fat. A bargain at £2.25 a portion.
Little Bay, 171 Farringdon Rd, EC1R 3AL (020 7278 1234) Farringdon tube/rail.

13 McDermott’s
This family-run Addington chippy was the south-east’s finalist in the Federation of Fish Fryers 2005 chip shop of the year awards. Fans reckon it beats famous venues up west on quality and price. The chips are made with Maris Pipers, cut 14mm wide (we call that thick), and double-fried in groundnut oil.
McDermott’s, 5-6 Forestdale Shopping Centre, Featherbed Lane, Croydon CR0 9AS (020 8651 1440) Gravel Hill or Addington Village rail.

12 Geales
Garry Hollihead, the chef who with business partners Andy Taylor and Mark Fuller has recently revamped this vintage Notting Hill spot, chooses beef dripping for frying chips because it’s the best match for Geales’ beer-battered fish. All steps in the process are geared to producing the perfect golden-yellow chip with fluffy centre. Hollihead prefers the Agria potato variety to the more common Maris Piper and makes sure they are not cut thinly, otherwise they’d soak up too much fat on frying. The chips are actually cooked three times: first boiled in water, then fried in the dripping at a low temperature, and finally fried at a high temperature. Tartare sauce is, he says, a must.
Geales, 2 Farmer St, W8 7SN (020 7727 7528) Notting Hill Gate tube.

11 Fine Burger Company
Some Time Out critics think the best thing about this burgeoning chain is its chunky, skin-on chips, hand-cut from high-quality Maris Piper potatoes. ‘The skin is left on for extra flavour and goodness,’ says managing director Robert Tame, who seems to have customers’ health very much in mind. ‘We only use pure rapeseed oil for cooking the chips as it contains both omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, and is reported to reduce cholesterol,’ he adds.
Fine Burger Company, 37 Bedford Hill SW12 9EY (020 8772 0266) Balham tube/rail.