Chippy hike

The UK tradition of eating fish that had been battered and fried in oil was introduced to the London by Spanish and Portuguese Jewish immigrants in the 1860s. Chips had arrived in Britain from France in the eighteenth century, too. They were known as pommes frites.  

The ‘Rock & Sole Plaice’ opened in London in 1871. It’s London's oldest fish and chip shop and is still in operation today in Covent Garden. A lot of fish and chips were originally served wrapped up in old newspapers, but this has now been replaced with plain paper, cardboard and plastic.  

During the late 1800s, the development of railways connected ports to major industrial cities. This meant that fresh fish could be rapidly transported to heavily populated areas inland.  

During the Second World War, fish and chips remained one of the few foods in the United Kingdom not subject to rationing. During the D-Day landings, British soldiers who were part of the parachute regiment, often found themselves behind enemy lines at night. They needed a way of telling whether someone nearby was a friend or enemy. Their solution was a pair of codewords, so one person would call out ‘fish’ and the other replied ‘chips’. 

The first mention of chips was in 1854 when a leading chef included ‘thin cut potatoes cooked in oil’ in his recipe book, Shilling Cookery. Around this time, fish warehouses sold fried fish and bread, with mention of this in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist published in 1830. 

There are claims to the first chippie from Lancashire in the North and London in the South of England. No matter who may have opened the first fish and chip shop, the trade grew to feed a rapidly expanding population, reaching a staggering 35,000 shops in the 1930s and more than tripling since then. 

In Ireland, it’s thought the first fish and chips were sold by an Italian immigrant called Giuseppe Cervi. In around 1880, he mistakenly stepped off an America-bound ship at Cobh (then called Queenstown) in County Cork. He then walked all the way to Dublin, around 168 miles. Once in Dublin, Giuseppe started selling fish and chips outside universities and local pubs from a handcart, before finding a permanent shop in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street). His wife, Palma, would ask customers "Uno di questa, uno di quella?" This phrase meant "one of this, one of the other", so entered the vernacular in Dublin as "one and one". This is still a way of referring to fish and chips in the city today.  

There are still around 11,000 fish and chip shops in the UK serving this beloved dish. Collectively these businesses use 10% of the UK's potato crop and 30% of all white fish sold in the UK. The industry generates a turnover of around £1.2 billion every year. The record for the largest number of portions sold in one day by an independent fish and chip shop is over 4,000.