{"id":81327,"date":"2023-11-15T10:22:55","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/posterboyedit.com\/?p=81327"},"modified":"2023-11-15T10:22:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T10:22:55","slug":"tom-parker-bowles-finds-a-salt-of-the-earth-scottish-chippie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/posterboyedit.com\/lifestyle\/tom-parker-bowles-finds-a-salt-of-the-earth-scottish-chippie\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Parker Bowles finds a salt-of-the-earth Scottish chippie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best chippie in Britain? TOM PARKER BOWLES eats the finest fish and chips he has had for years… in a VERY surprising venue and for under \u00a310<\/h1>\n

EATING OUT\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tom finds a salt-of-the-earth Scottish chippie worthy of Rick Stein \u2013 just much cheaper<\/span><\/p>\n

Sea Salt + Sole is, like most decent chippies, not much to look at: a clean, modern building on the edge of Dyce train station, just outside Aberdeen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a small ordering area, a long, glass-fronted counter, scrupulously clean, and a battalion of gleaming fryers.<\/p>\n

The walls are plastered with various awards, the menu beaming out from overhead screens. It\u2019s just past four, and the shop has opened.<\/p>\n

We order a large haddock supper from smiling, immaculate staff, the fresh fillets dipped into a thin batter before being plunged into the seething oil. Battered smoked sausage, too. And a pie, from Charles McHardy Butcher in Stonehaven.<\/p>\n

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As well as haddock and smoked sausage, Sea Salt + Sole\u2019s salt and pepper battered squid is available in season<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The walls of Sea Salt + Sole on the edge of Dyce train station, just outside Aberdeen, are plastered with various awards<\/p>\n

I briefly eye up the \u2018puddings\u2019 section, filled with every hue, from black to white via red and haggis. But time is short. Appetite, too. Rick Stein is cooking turbot with hollandaise sauce at the Braemar Literary Festival opening dinner in a mere two hours. We must leave some room for that.<\/p>\n

Ten minutes later, three boxes are slid across the counter. We go outside, to the station platform, and sit on a hard plastic bench. Trains slide in and out, disgorging their punters before us. But our minds are on higher things \u2013 haddock, wearing its batter like a silk slip, crisp, golden and greaseless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We tear it apart\u00a0with our fingers, the flesh falling into thick alabaster flakes. It\u2019s incandescently fresh, still scented with the sea and artfully steamed within that burnished shell.<\/p>\n

Below the haddock, chips, lots of them, soaked in salt and vinegar, fat, with just the right ratio of crunch and squelch. Curry sauce is suitably sweet and viscous.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The haddock was crisp, golden and greaseless<\/p>\n

Smoked sausage, in a gossamer wisp of that batter, has snap, smoke and succulence: a saveloy with a PhD in good taste, just like that pie, its fine shortcrust case barely able to contain the mass of soft, savoury, slow-cooked beef. The bottom is slightly soggy, just as it should be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Within four minutes, everything is gone, right down\u00a0to the last crumb of batter.<\/p>\n

This dinner is, quite simply, one of the finest things I\u2019ve eaten for years. And every bit the equal to Rick Stein\u2019s magnificent tranche of turbot. Albeit at about a quarter of the price.<\/p>\n