Life in London: Fish & Chips

hello i'm jill at ingvid and today's lesson is a little bit different because we are on location outside a fish and chip shop which is a very popular kind of place in the uk so here we are in a street in london about seven miles from central london and we are going to be visiting this fish and chip shop here this one and so let me explain about fish and chips um it's a very english tradition and lots and lots of people like to eat fish and chips and there are a lot more fish and chip shops in the uk than there are mcdonald's so there are over 10 000 fish and chip shops compared with 1200 mcdonald's about 80 percent of the uk population eat fish and chips at least once a year so and some of them eat fish and chips every week so it's very very popular the idea is that the fish is cooked at a very high temperature and it's in a kind of covering called a batter and then chips well i'm sure you know what chips are so they're potatoes cut into pieces and also fried at a very high temperature and fish and chips apparently are very good for you because they contain protein and fiber and iron and vitamins so if you're in the uk or if you're planning to visit the uk and if you haven't already visited a fish and chip shop then i can highly recommend them so that's a little bit about fish and chips the background so uh of course there's a lot of vocabulary associated with it which we're about to find out because now we're going to step inside the shop and meet the owner and he's going to tell us a bit more about fish and chips so let's go in thank you thanks for letting us come in that's no problem like your fish and chip shop so so fish and chips are a great english tradition aren't you yeah especially you know when you're in anywhere of england you can't go wrong with the fish and chips people you know tourists for example especially that's why they come in to london you know get a bit of everything they can within the uk whether it's fried chicken or i don't know beans on toast for example as a traditional english breakfast yes but we we do our fish and chips in here yes and we and this shop's been very it's very popular isn't it i often see you have a lot of customers yeah in a short amount of time we've done pretty good i mean it's been open since january 2016. uh till today we've you know we've always had good feedback from our customers as well yeah just over a year yeah due to that reason you know the word goes around yeah the more the better we get the more the customers obviously happier yeah and lots of people live in this area and yeah so they'll all notice all the new visions yeah our customers are based more regular customers you know locals in the neighborhood so it's probably eight percent of our customers are regulars twenty percent will be the fastest customers but even like i said it's been just over a year we still have people that haven't noticed us yet still got neighbors this shop to somebody the other day who i met up just up the road who lives locally and i said that the the new fish and chip shop and he didn't know yeah he didn't know about it so he said oh good i'm gonna try that because um it must be better than the one he's been losing we've already yeah we tried to separate ourselves from the low i mean we've got over probably three four local fish and chippies around but we try to obviously make ourselves stand out with the products we sell and obviously our concept of the shop i was going to say that the decor like this for example and the wood finish here and this sort of railway style it's the sort of old-fashioned it's just the british rail it's you know from 60 1960s plus 70s so we tried to put a bit of everything into it so it looks more retro yes and obviously it's called vintage fish so we have to try yeah that was our whole concept so vintage being a word in english that means something old but but valuable um it's a good name to use and also the old style sort of 1960s when we used to have a transport system called british rail which then got broken up and it was the nationalized transport system which it's not nationalized anymore so this kind of sign was the a station sign um at one time so it's nice i like that you must have had that sign made special yeah they have a lot of british trail it was customized by us most of our stuff are customized by us in the shop we saw that yeah because i i mean i love the the wooden you know the wooden finish here and also the top pieces we have to burn all these wood before we put them together yeah we have to burn them varnish them polish them so it's got this kind of effect to it yeah because you can see it needs to look old as well due to again our concept so we didn't want it to look so brand new so we have to wear it out a bit before we put it on there you didn't just want no no we didn't want here we i'm like it's obviously new material that we use but we try to wear it out as much as we can and also i noticed now you've got an old-fashioned telephone here we well with the dial yeah with the dial that goes like that we we have you know press button phones nowadays so does that work that works right at the moment when we first initially opened it was all plugged in but it's really hard to work with it due to the spot on it so we can't exactly move around very freely especially when we're busy you know over the weekend it's really hard to stay in one spot so we have to change our phones around but we thought we'll stick keep it there again it attracts lots of attention really everyone comes to play around with it someone would tell their kid or their grandchildren about their memories when they had that phone in their house i mean i remember we've we've still got an old phone like this at home it's older than that but um so you can dial up yeah it definitely works it works that's the original meaning of the word dial a circular thing with with holes for the finger and you go like that if anyone is too young to remember that's that's a dial telephone so that's amazing okay and cd which is our main attraction yeah because it's near the window yeah everyone has a look as they walk past it's one of the first things i noticed yeah for a lot of people that it draws attention so you you've got a sort of retro program on yeah we've got some old music old jazzy yeah yeah retro music in black and white black and white television on a weekend we do have a lot of you know wait not a lot but it's like at least 10 15 minutes waiting time because you know in the space of half an hour we can get 10 to 15 orders in one go so we try to leave a lot of space where people can freely move around and also i think you you cook each order yeah individually individually that is another you know you don't have sort of rows of fish on a weekend we've always got fishing coming out whether it's a pod or a habit because it's always consistent we're always selling on the weekend but other than that if someone wants to walk in we'll cook it on order and we explain why because we try to keep our standards high our food it needs to be quality i mean our price isn't the lowest around but keeping in mind that we get our fish from felizy market it comes in every day in the morning and we do go for the freshest and the best quality fish which is peterhead comes from scotland and it is the nearest to us so it's the freshest one we can get our hands on because you don't have to travel from this other norway or elsewhere you know from another harbor so it comes straight to billings gate from scotland peter head straight to buildings gate there's obviously independent organizations in there they deliver it to us every morning so you have a set order for each year yeah every day we'll have a set order and obviously every day that does mean we are limited because we don't keep any frozen fish in stock so when we finish our fresh fish then unfortunately we've got no other preference to sell for that day but it's luckily it's not always the case it's only on a saturday which we can because saturday is our last day due to billings gate market being closed over the weekend on sunday and monday we also closed because again we can't get our hands on any fresh fish and we strictly are against frozen so we close for the two days everyone's happy that way because we are comfortable serving our food as well yeah as it is fresh we know nothing's going to be wrong with it no it's perfect hooked on order everything's great that's good and for anyone who's not heard of billings gate it is the main fish market very big fish market in london which is very famous and it's been there for a long time and it's near the river isn't it yeah yes because at one time um all the boats brought the fish in up the river so it was it was there in east london very near the river um the logical place for the fish to be all put together in the market uh to sell to people so that's billingscape very famous okay so maybe we could have a look at the that sounds interesting can you tell us what white weight is oh my face are very small earth fishes don't have to describe them exactly but they come with a bread they're coming coated in breadcrumbs and we fry them in the oil they come as a starter so it's not a really bad the sizes do change depending on the age of the fish with a bed of salad to pop them on top lovely okay and what else our main seller with our starters will be the hand cut calamari on our panko coated prawns they're both covered in coats again deep fried but it's really tricky cooking them because we keep our oil to like 150 160 degrees when we're cooking those two specifically so they're nice puffy not so obviously crunchy because when you do them in a higher temperature of oil they can be really crispy and dry so again with our starters customers do have to wait an extra let's say five minutes so we get the again it's slightly thicker larger it's not exactly fine and little you know it's not like a dust or anything they're more chunky it's more crispy once they're cooked compared to the threaded front and then the sort of standard and and the fish then when you when you fry it yeah uh it's in this thing called the batter yes so what is the batter uh it's we are batters it's basic it's based uh made of flour egg you know plenty of ingredients what how we look at the batter in our point of view we try to make sure that when we put a fish in it's completely covered in and there's not one little hole that's open but when there is a hole within the batter that fish would suck in the oil so we don't want that to happen but what we do is we i don't want to give you the whole information with the way we batter our fish because that is kind of a chef's secret with our one we've kind of we're still working on our one to make it better so every day we can come up with something upgraded to the day we had before so the only thing i can tell you about is i can show you if you want how we practicing and chips lovely oh it smells nice pity we can't get smells coming through on our videos so the chips are really nice chunky ones they're not those thin sort of french fries they're cut quite sickly which i think is really nice with our chips we try to use the chunkiest plate we have for our chicken machine because the chunkier it is the better the chips is yeah you know that is potato unlike fries they have it's not i'm not saying fries are bad but when it comes to fish and chips you want this chunky chips yeah so we also customized our machines for that we changed the blades around so they're slightly thicker than normal right our secret is to leave no gaps within the batter okay so what we do is first we dip the fish into batter and then scrape it all down when we scrape it all down we know that the excess batter is off yeah and we know that because of the breading we use underneath the batter to coat the fish it holds onto all the batter right and we dip it again yes everything's all covered the fish is completely covered so we'll just take off most of the batter because obviously fish and chips is preferred uh with thin batter lightly the thicker the batter is the more oil it will suck in and when you take it out and put it on your plate the more oil it would leave out with it so we try our best not to and then we just dip it into the oil wow yeah less the bats are the better the fishes yes and how long does it take in the oil for these it will take seven to eight minutes at least depends on the portion of the fish as well some can be thicker which could take more than ten minutes but again we try to keep it when we portion it we don't want it to be sophie because the more longer it stays in there the more the coating the batter will get done and we try to avoid that so there's been other fishes but not thinner but we try to keep it to a standard portion so it you know fits the time that the customers would like to wait as well because sometimes years ago i seem to remember when when someone put the fish in the oil it was sort of sizzling and making them a lounge yeah that's when there's a lot of things that seems quiet because there's only one fish in there nothing else usually when you put two fish especially plus chips i don't put any chips in there so it's not going to sizzle but i'll still throw away now on a friday we can't hear like i said we can't hear ourselves talking once we've got what it's not going to bubbling effect going on and again we try to keep the shot as clean and you know fresh as possible so we do tend to keep our lids down but there's an extraction system within the machine it takes off all the smoke and the oils spell which obviously for the environment right i can obviously keep it open right now yeah just to show us sizzling so the word sizzle is one of those words that imitates the sound sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle sizzle is the sound of something frying okay so that looks lovely and then let's see so you have other things like pies so yes do a lot of people like to buy we do sell pies our menu is more fish based wide options so we do obviously keep the classic fish and chip shop menu in place with the pies and the sausages which we do sell as well but we're more popular for our fish so i mean like our personal record i think on the weekend was 160 plus orders but that's not fish that's just the order so the number of customers that we serve and keep in mind because it's a local area our orders aren't just one fish and chips it's usually like five fish i don't know free chips yes so we do serve a lot of fish compared to our other items like coming in to get them ordered to take home there might be several people yeah it's always okay it's usually the case that is always the case around here but yeah we do we've got chicken burgers we've got veggie burgers we've got pies that we also serve for people that prefer not to eat fish all the time yeah other than that we've got sausages and the rest other than most are basically all fish based we try to keep it only fish so we can concentrate on how to serve the fish as best as possible there are some fish and chip shops which do for example fried chicken or even kebabs at some point which again we don't support in fairness we think if you want to do one type of food then stick to it try not to get every other food involved specialized yeah we specialize in fish so we stick very traditional vegetable that goes with fish and chips is the mushy peas yes mushy peas up again you can't go wrong with fish and chips and mushi please that's definitely another best seller that we have in there actually and it is just peas but mushy so not individual self-contained yeah probably half of them are mushy and half of them are whole but they are mixed because so you still got bits of peas in there as well plus the mushy side of it too and on the side of that we also have curry sauce curry sauce is our own recipe so again i can't give you a lot of information about the curry sauce but curry sauce is also another uh traditional thing of fish and chips our one's our own recipe so we do sell a lot of curry sauce as well even when we first opened we were just handing them out give it a try and it worked out well everyone did like it so is it curry or a hot chocolate no it's not it's a mild curry yeah it wouldn't be hot okay celine so i think we would like to order some fish wouldn't we so can you uh can you recommend anything i would again it's going to be a bit of a classic but i would give you a cod right due to again it being pizza head one of the freshest quads around you can find okay very much yes again they came in today so i'll put your cod on i'll put some starters as well right just to top it up oh now rip um somebody who's with us here wanted to fish no problem [Music] wow covered in breadcrumbs as well in breadcrumbs which is very very tasty so so we're looking at cod in butter and the fish cake yeah obviously some of our uh myris piper chips and some lovely paris piper chips that would be lovely and there are three others so just enough for three i can do you all separate portions no problem um well whatever you think um i mean leave it to me so we were talking about the shop now here we're here in south east london yeah but you were telling me earlier about uh another vintage fish that you're opening in south west london yep so what we've done is hair we're on the skirts of blackheath more towards lee in southeast london which is our prop it's our base basically because it's the first one now it's been about a week now we've just got one in wimbledon uh that's not exactly changed yet it's a running shop at the boat but hopefully towards the summer it's going to be closed referb through a to z and it will be open again as vintage fish and that's on a low part road in wimbledon so this is the place where they play the tennis wimbledon is the famous tennis area so yeah and it is close to the tennis courts as well actually it's not even a mile from there so another really good nice location lots of customers especially during the winter months that's one bonus we'll get from wow well that's marvellous so that's really exciting i wish you all the best and then i understand that in the uk there is an annual competition for the best fish and chip shop in the whole of the country so maybe one day do you think you might go into that definitely that's what we're working on as well once the wimbledon's open that would be a more uh seafood based restaurant as well as fish and chips so once that's opened the next concentration would be on the fish and chips awards wow so that would be very exciting so well celine and also jason and lily thank you very much for letting us come into your fish and chip shop to hear all about your work and so thank you very much thank you and wishing you all the very best thank you thank you and see you again very very soon and we're looking forward to our orders on the way we're feeling really hungry after all this talk about food so thank you okay so thank you goodbye have a nice day thank you

Channel: Learn English with Gill (engVid)

Views: 140,147

Rating: 4.9678249 out of 5

Keywords: fish and chips, fish n chips, chip shop, London, English food, British food, vocabulary, English vocabulary, British accent, British English, learn English, English, ESL, English grammar, engVid, speak English, accent, lessons, IELTS, TOEFL, anglais, inglés, Englisch, англи́йский, angielski, إنجليزي, Inggris, Angol, Hoc Tieng Anh, TESOL, TESL, TEFL, spoken english, speaking skills, presentation skills, native speaker, slang, job skills, native accent, tenses

Id: qCfHWM_hnXE

Length: 25min 59sec (1559 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020