THIS week, people all over the country will be honouring one of the nation’s favourite foods – the all-mighty chip. Where better to start than Cardiff’s very own Chippy Alley?
Whether you enjoy them best doused in gravy or swamped in curry sauce, National Chip Week sets out to celebrate this great British favourite with events and activities across the country. Potato Council, a division of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, who support the potato industry, runs national Chip Week, and are funded by potato growers and potato trade purchasers.
Chippy Alley, formerly known as Caroline Street is located between The Hayes and St. Mary’s Street in the lower part of Cardiff city centre. The Street takes its name from the high density of fast food shops populated there.
Positioned in the middle of the street is one of the city’s oldest fish and chip shops, who also claim to be the oldest resident fast food shop on Caroline Street, Dorothy’s Fish Bar. First opened in the late thirties, Dorothy’s, since 1953, is now split into two sections.
One side serves takeaway whereas the other offers seating for customers wishing to dine in. Dorothy’s will not be holding any events this year, but in 2007 the fish bar made its way into the Guinness World Records book for the world’s largest bag of chips, as part of National Chip Week.
The chippy managed to make a whopping 496 kilos of chips, which they then fed to pigs at a farm in Monmouthshire. Since then, Dorothy’s has catered for a party of 200 people and each use around 160 bags of potatoes weighing 25 kilos each. Each bag is the equivalent of 60 portions of chips.
Manager Matthew Hocking, 21, who has worked in Dorothy’s since he was 11, said: “We’ve never advertised but business is always steady and we’re extremely busy on weekends and when the rugby’s on. Our most popular accompaniment to chips is curry sauce.
“What makes us different to every other chip shop on Caroline Street is we use real potatoes. Most of the shops use frozen but we cook them from fresh and spend a lot more money on potatoes than other shops.” Each year National Chip Week offers awards to the best chippy in the UK, the best regional chippies and the county’s best chip shops.
For the second year running the Best Chippy Chips 2014 award goes to Burton Road Chippy in Lincoln. The best regional chip shop award for the Wales area goes to Shillingfords in Neath and the award for best county Chippy, in Cardiff, goes to Yan’s Fish Bar on Whitchurch Road.
Our Cardiffian reporters did their own research into the finest portions of chips around.
