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FINE SAILING FOR FISH & CHIPS

11 October 2007

With top chefs now looking at opening Fish & Chip restaurants now would appear a useful time to look at how the Great British dish is faring in other sectors within catering. The truth is that Fish & Chips is doing well and that caterers from the cost sector through to fine dining see great appeal in offering the dish regularly. First stop is one of the UK's 'rising stars' among contract caterers, London based Harbour & Jones, who cook for 15 major companies across 22 sites including 7,000 staff at Sky TV and turning over £11 million a year.

Founded by partners Patrick Harbour and Nathan Jones this innovative firm is committed to being both bang up-to-date in with modern trends and tastes and to deliver food that's always freshly prepared from scratch using ingredients sourced from smaller specialist suppliers. Chefs are given exceptional freedom. "Fish & Chips is doing very well indeed, with Friday's Fish and Chips something that's sacrosanct," says Patrick Harbour. "This I had to discover for myself at Sky TV where I once decided to take Fish & Chips off the menu and replace it with a choice of a nice Fish Pie or Thai Fish Curry - and I was nearly lynched for doing it!"

Jeppe Hein's 'Spiral Labyrinth at Tate Modern (top) where there's no mystery about the restaurant's biggest-selling dish - Fish & Chips

Harbour adds that Fish & Chips is popular at sites he services throughout the UK, but that customers are increasingly calling for top quality fresh product and re-assurance that their fish comes form sustainable stock. "All our fish comes from stock that's sustainable, sourced from Matthew Stevens in Cornwall - and it's all fresh fish, never frozen. We use Haddock as that seems to be faring better than Cod in the supplies stakes, and that's important for people to know. "We also make our own beer batter at each site, using no pre-made mixes. Plus all chips are home made from fresh potatoes. We also make a good old traditional show of things by offering our own home-made pickled eggs, gherkins and mushy peas to go with the Fish and Chips. We use a vegetable oil for frying, we can't use dripping because of we have to be mindful of the vast cultural differences between people at client companies."

Though Harbour knows he has a winner here he adds that his fine services of Fish & Chips need some measure of cross subsidy from other menu items, saying: "By and large, people in all walks of life just love Fish and Chips - but it isn't really profitable. Other items are needed to offset the costs." Profitability of course, is much more the goal for the profit sector, and at Tate Catering, Fish & Chips is a good profit earner. Tate Catering is the in-house catering operation that runs restaurants at the various Tate Galleries including St Ives, Liverpool to London. It employs hundreds and turns over millions, making it one of the UK's most successful in-house operations.

while Patrick Harbour and Nathan Jones (pictured) of Harbour & Jones regard Fish & Chips as a must on their menus

Fish & Chips is a regular daily menu item with Tate, competing against many Mediterranean-inspired and Modern British dishes (as you'd expect for an 'arty' customer base that includes lots of foreign tourists) - and it's beating them all. "Fish and Chips is our number one seller - certainly our most popular dish," says Tate Catering's Chief Executive Robin Bidgood. "And it's been pretty much that way for years.

"I think people are attracted to Fish & Chips both because it is traditional and the fact that it just looks and smells great." Tate also find that Fish & Chips is a profitable menu item (it sells at £9.95 with all the trimmings, drinks excluded). "It does so well it helps us balance the books," adds Bidgood He goes on to detail a similar message as is heard at Harbour & Jones about the need for top quality - and sustainability. The two even use the same fish supplier. "Our fish is fresh only, every day and only from sustainable stocks. It's brought up each day from boats landed at Cornwall and supplied through Matthew Stevens at St Ives. We choose to use Haddock as there seems to be questions over the stocks of Cod. "We make our own beer-based batter on a daily basis at every site and all the chips are freshly prepared too. We fry in a vegetable oil - though we are experimenting right now with using beef dripping. This is something we started to think about while we were doing some work earlier with the chef Tom Aikens." Mention again of Mr Aikens (see Big Interview p16) brings us around to the fine dining sector. And while we do hear of celeb chefs adding Fish & Chips to menus for period this is far from the norm.

To find out a bit more as to why I turned to Craig Millar at the reputed Seafood Restaurant at St Monan's in Fife. Craig and Tim Butler own and operate this award-winning restaurant along with another of the same name up the coast at St Andrews. Set dinner at St Monan's comes in at £35 for three courses. "We don't have traditional Fish & Chips on the menu at the moment, though we're looking at this again what with re-launching the St Monan's restaurant next year," says Craig. "We see this as part of something of a back to basics move. However I can say definitely that fish and seafood itself is doing all right just now, fish in itself is something that's seen as being very healthy."

Though he isn't - as yet - cooking Fish & Chips regularly Craig has a healthy respect for the frying trade, adding: "Fish and chips is something that I enjoy myself. I'm in the Anstruther Fish Bar once a week for my Haddock and Chips, which I like to enjoy with Mayonnaise." What he really likes from these visits to Anstruther is "the sheer quality" of Fish & Chips that is cooked to order and he wishes that more fish fryers would do the same, seeing product left warm for long periods as its greatest fault. However, Craig finds much to admire among fish fryers adding: "The thing we in my sector could perhaps learn most from is the simplicity. After all there's just three basic ingredients in fish, batter and chips. And preparing all three without being over complicated can be sheer perfection."