The Old Ones are The Best

There's a useful page called The Wayback Machine which keeps the stuff we might otherwise have lost. Here's an old story of mine from 2003, a review of a local restaurant called 

Ron's Chipper.

It seemed such a nice evening last night that we decided to go out to eat a traditional Friday dinner, and where better to go than Ron’s Chipper?

Ron himself came to greet us at the door, no doubt aware of the fact that I was the official restaurant critic for The Firework. Either he’d seen my picture heading the weekly column, and has been anxiously waiting for my arrival (and automatic ‘Two Thumbs Up’ award for advertisers), or perhaps my warning reversed-charge call for my impending surprise visit had alerted him.

Rubbing his hands on his pristine string vest, Ron led us to his special table. ‘Vis one doesn’t wobble’ he joked as he seated us on the bench (which did).

I had the fish and chips, which was quite delicious. My partner (you never say ‘wife’ in these articles), had the fish and chips. 

They were quite delicious. 

Ron chose the fish himself from the freezer and fried them in his famous cauldron – filled with a special oil which he proudly told us had been handed down for three generations, ‘since my grand-da’ left the navy and set up a chipper in Dover’.

My portion was generous, comprising one piece of deeply fried fish and a large helping of chips. I counted fifty two delicately fried reconstituted potatoes wrapped in the grease-proof paper (yesterday’s Euro Weakly). My partner had three less.

A small tub of crunchy mayonnaise decorated the table. I asked Ron what it was. ‘Oh, that’s a special sauce that’s made by Heinz’, he answered. Upon which, a young man with a blond crew-cut peered out shyly from behind the fryer and smiled. 

‘Heinz’, said Ron.

 

For entertainment, clients can read their newspaper ‘plates’ as their food congeals. Mine was all about my favourite television programme, Coronation Street, and was quite fascinating. My dear wife was reading hers for a bit, suspiciously quiet, when she suddenly looked up, with a small piece of fish adhering to her upper lip, and said, ‘apparently, according to this, I’m going to be having a super holiday abroad soon in the sun’.

The décor is quite modern – on the yellowed walls, a flurry of calendars apparently advertising silicone implants vied for my attention with a poster entitled ‘Ten Reasons why Beer is Better than a Woman’ and another which said ‘Try our Fish and Chips’. 

Ron was hovering as we finished our repast. ‘Do Spaniards come here?’, I asked. ‘Spaniards?’, answered Ron with a far-away expression. ‘No. Have you finished reading?’, he said, generously adding, ‘you can keep the pages if you want’.