Brickbat: Finger Licking Good

The Liverpool City Council is considering a measure that would require restaurants to serve fish and chips on plates to those eating outdoors. Traditionally, the British serve fish and chips in paper and eat them with their fingers. But council members say people often just drop the paper on the street when they are finished and this law would reduce littering.

Comments

[invisible furry hand]

Great. Now I'm jonesing for fish and chips. DAMN YOU CHARLES OLIVER!

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Something I fell in love with in England. Why is it restaurants here (even chains like Applebees that should know better) leave the fish so bland?

[UnCivilServant]

Risk aversion. beyond a given critical mass, corporate culture becomes saturated with it.

[invisible furry hand]

Do they not use beer batter?

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Evidently not. I try to learn at least one new kind of cooking every Summer, and maybe this will be when I go in search of how to get that North Yorkshire flavor.

[Ted S.]

Not frying in beef tallow? In one of the threads yesterday I linked to where it was the assholes at the CSPI that bullied restaurants into not using beef tallow for frying. To try to maintain taste, they switched to... trans fats, which CSPI claimed were safe.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Nobody fries in tallow anymore. Pity.

Yeah, I enjoyed your take down of Jackass Jacobson and his Center for Tyranny in the Vegan Interest.

[Ted S.]

Thanks, but it wasn't my takedown. I only linked to it.

[Doctor Whom]

I think you mean "especially chains like Applebee's." Chain restaurants are in business to provide a uniform and predictable dining experience (and to please the demographic that goes to chain restaurants) while mass-producing food to keep costs down.

[sarcasmic]

Come to the coast of Maine. We know how to fry haddock.

[Heroic Mulatto]

And clams.

I want a clam roll.

[sarcasmic]

I get one every summer at one of the agricultural fairs. Battered whole bellies. Yum.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

An old neighbor from Maine used to dig a hole, build a fire in it, put pots of beans in the hole and fill the hole back over. The next day he would dig them up. Best damn beans I ever tasted.

[sarcasmic]

I bet there was real maple syrup in those beans, along with a chunk of salt pork.

[Ted S.]

Burying is also part of the original method of making gravlax.

[sarcasmic]

I make my gravlax in the fridge.

[Suthenboy]

What are you talking about?

Upon arriving in limeyland I was taken to a fish and chips place....I don't remember the name, but it was famous in Newcastle...and I found it to be inedible.

I think it was marinaded in water, battered in plain flour and was dripping with grease. I was told that was traditional.

My experience was the same in two other places. I gave up on english fish and chips.

I nearly starved in that country.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Newcastle and Yorkshire are a hundred kilometers apart. That's a cultural world away in England. Kind of like trying to get good, cheap barbecue in Richmond versus Raleigh.

[Suthenboy]

Yeah, I noticed that the people in one town could not understand the dialect of the people in the next town over a hill or across a river.

I took a native Sunderland girl to a medical Clinic in Newcastle. After the the exam the Doc gave his little talk on her condition. She sat there silently. After he left she sneered to me " Did you understand anything that wanker said?".

Most of the world is that way. The U.S. really is a unique place.

[sarcasmic]

In Heaven all the chefs are French, the police are British, and the cars are German.

In Hell all the cars are French, the chefs are British, and the police are German.

[Ted S.]

Make your own.

[UnCivilServant]

Me and hot oil are a bad combination - I mean second and third degree burns bad. I have to rely on outside suppliers. IFH might have better luck, but I know my limits when it comes to frying.

[invisible furry hand]

What's wrong with your orphan? Mine fries very competently.

[UnCivilServant]

I'm not a libertarian, I don't have orphan labor to fall back on.

[LiveFreeOrDiet]

Oh, I misread that and thought he was frying his orphan!

[Doctor Whom]

What do you do to orphans who don't keep your monocle collection well polished?

[Agile Cyborg]

If you can pick your nose you can fry.

[UnCivilServant]

Those 'skills' are completely unrelated.

[Agile Cyborg]

It's that simple, man. Seriously, nothing to it. Probably one of those little life things you are intimidated by. Everybody has a list of their own. Strike that bitch off and learn to fry stuff- it's easy peasy.

[Radioactive]

mmmmm...fried boogers

[Ted S.]

Me and hot oil are a bad combination - I mean second and third degree burns bad.

And Youtube videos of you and hot oil? 😉

[Agile Cyborg]

How 'bout Youtube videos of UnCivil IN warm oil? Sliding hither and yon, maybe add a fat black girl- they can both be eating fish and chips. The paper and foodstuffs kinda getting mashed into the oil and all over their bodies in the glistening sun. That would make an interesting calendar.

[sarcasmic]

Mix up your beer batter. Get your oil up to 375. Dip the fish in flour, then the batter. Gently lay it into the oil. When it floats it's done. Any monkey can do it.

[Agile Cyborg]

Make sure the fish is not overly moist when you dip the fish into the flour/batter. I usually dry them off with paper towels before the deed.

[Snark Plissken]

This is the sort of thing that drove Clint Eastwood to run for mayor.

[Radioactive]

I thought it was a Buick...

[Lady Bertrum]

So they'll just drop the plate on the ground. nice.

[Radioactive]

or whip them at childrens' heads, like frisbees

[WTF]

I sense a new sport in the making...

[Radioactive]

a great disturbance in the Force...

[Fist of Etiquette]

This is a ridiculous measure that won't do anything. What they really want to do is outlaw outdoor eating. Or fish and chips. Or both.

[UnCivilServant]

I'm just wondering how much of a disruption the Chip shops will feel when the newspapers fold and there are fewer suppliers of crappy papers to wrap the food in. Since this is my largest concern around the painfully slow demise of newsprint, you can tell I'm not terribly worried.

[Ted S.]

What about the lack of linings for cat dirty boxes?

[UnCivilServant]

When I lived in a house with a cat, we used inside-out trash bags, so we could just invert it when the whole box needed a change. The porous gravel prevented the cats from holing the bag.

[Radioactive]

couldn't you just fry the cat?

[Pro Libertate]

Well, if printed newspapers end abruptly, there may be a massive oversupply of newsprint.

[UnCivilServant]

After the initial glut, the supply will contract substantially because the major market evaporated.

[sarcasmic]

First they banned them from using newspaper, now they're banning paper in general.

Will it ever end? (rhetorical question - we all know the answer is no)

[Agile Cyborg]

Probably not enough waste receptacles. I'm wondering if these are drunk fucks because who the hell else acts like a turd and throws their shit on the ground but a drunk who just ate a taco or a fish'n chips. They probably should install drunk pits in the ground to swallow up the people and litter. Have a large tube running into the hull of a ship. When the ship fills up with drunks and litter ship them to Madagascar. Problem solved.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I'm wondering if these are drunk fucks

This is Liverpool we're talking about here.

Wonder no more.

[Agile Cyborg]

Liverpool would fit in quite well here in the Ohio backwoods on a Saturday night. We just stack the drunks in the woods and usher in the raccoons and possums to lick their pukey visages clean.

[Lady Bertrum]

Sometime ago, I read a story about how cops in an English town were required by city ordinance to carry extra flip-flops with them on Saturday nights because drunk bitches were falling off their extra high-heels and cutting their feet on broken glass. They don't embrace the concept of natural consequences in old blighty. Not that I'm judging having occasionally been a drunk bitch myself.

[Agile Cyborg]

I'm exceptionally tolerant of drunk bitches. I have two delightful sisters who can drink most men under the table and, uh, have crawled across the yard a time or two looking for grass fairies. The flip-flop idea strikes me as endearing and well-thought out. High heels and strong booze equals dizzy to several powers to be sure.

[jmomls]

*because drunk bitches were falling off their extra high-heels *

This is why women weren't allowed in pubs for centuries.

[timm]

This is a typical government reaction. This type of reaction started in the '80s as I can recall. Rather than ticket people for littering, they make the restaurants change to try to get around the problem.