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Radio Shack

This is the first I've heard of Nathan's, but then I've never been in that part of the country.

The best places that I know of to get F&C (though it's typically not called that round here) only serve it on Fridays. But then I don't get out enough to know of other places.

I recall several years ago being somewhere up north, and for some reason thought that it was Friday. We were at a restaurant with a whole page of options for Friday Night Fish Fry, and I asked for the haddock. (I think they also offered cod, Pollack, perch, and tilapia). It was Saturday, but the waitress didn't know I thought it was Friday. I ended up being surprised with a really good fish sandwich. A lot of places have other fish options that aren't F&C, for days other than Friday. But I notice that for at least some places this means Saturday, not the rest of the week.
 
tipc said:
Ok, I get it. It was on account of the big war I presume. Dad used to tell me about it as he spent time in England (even after WWII as he was a merchant marine. That's how he met mom, poor guy :). I remember and episode of Lovejoy Mysteries where someone ate f&c from a newspaper. Perhaps for show (I.e some sort of nostalgic sentiment), or as you say they used faux newsprint. And I'm hungry I wish I.could get good f & c somewhere.

Is it all it's cracked up to be, even these days? Is the fish caught locally or shipped in from somewhere?
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I think the newspaper thing goes back to the 19th century. You're right that the war had a big role in fish and chips becoming a lasting national staple - though they were massively popular with the lower classes by about 1900, in WW2 fish and chips were exempt from rationing, so they broke out of class boundaries and became universal. You could still get fish and chips in newspaper when I was a kid in the 80s just as a normal thing (no ironic/nostalgic thing going on there) so Lovejoy may well have just been normal-for-the-time. To be honest I'm one of those awkward veggies so I'm only after the chips, but there are a lot of grim fish'n'chip shops, a few great ones, and a few expensive upmarket pastiches of the real thing. I'm told the good stuff is still good.

Radio Shack though... In the UK I remember Tandy shops up to about the mid 90s, they seem to have been a worse version of approximately the same thing. There was a bit of envy around for the US having Radio Shack, rumoured to be much better, but I seem to recall nearly all components here being mail order. By the time I finally visited the US, Radio Shack had become a phone shop :-( I was quite disappointed! The anglophile-American I married didn't remember it being anything else, but didn't grow up around soldering irons. I hope at least a few of the odd remnants of it are OK.
 
A look through a 1980 UK Tandy catalog(ue) if you want to see how it differs from what Radio Shack was offering in the U.S. at the time:

 
Just gotta ask ... is tartar sauce made available for the fish? Ketchup for the chips? Neither would seem quite right without them. Perhaps sounds odd. Heck Germans are known for dipping their fries in mayonnaise. No one loves mayo more then me, but encapsulating a whole french fry in it? I'll have to pass, ty.
 
Always tartar sauce, ketchup, and coleslaw. Often marble bread, clam chowder, and oyster crackers, too. The fish is almost always all-you-can-eat.

It's problematic for me because I don't use the tartar sauce, nor do I eat the coleslaw. And I always have to ask for lemons.
 
My first and last UK experience with fish and chips was about 40 years ago when I dropped by a busy shop in King's Cross. Fried cod and chips, wrapped in newsprint.

Unbelievably greasy, with the chips being limp oily limitations of good pommes frites. I then figured that going "native" with food in the UK was a lost cause. I opted for Indian restaurants after that and have never been tempted to try again. The greasy taste is still in my memory.
 
Chuck(G) said:
My first and last UK experience with fish and chips was about 40 years ago when I dropped by a busy shop in King's Cross. Fried cod and chips, wrapped in newsprint.

Unbelievably greasy, with the chips being limp oily limitations of good pommes frites. I then figured that going "native" with food in the UK was a lost cause. I opted for Indian restaurants after that and have never been tempted to try again. The greasy taste is still in my memory.
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What do the brits use for oil back then, lard? Food gets greasy if you use oil that isn't at the correct temperature (clings to the food).
 
tipc said:
Lol nah in the hood in Coram, Suffolk county on Middle Country rd., rte. 25. That area must be absolutely ghastly nowadays, I worked there in 1987. Born in Brooklyn, family moved to eastern (or central really) LI in 1975.
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Interesting, I guess the Nathan's/arcade combo was a thing back in the 80s. I've only been to the original Coney Island Nathan's and the Westbury one.

As for Radio Shack, I'm surprised there are still any stores left. I just checked Google Maps in the San Francisco Bay Area and I get a long list of locations saying "permanently closed". Here's a question: anyone use any of their computers back in the day (TRS-80 series, CoCo or PCs like the Tandy 1000 series) ?
 
I bought a T@ndy 1000 Christmas of 85. I wound up returning it, as it seemed a bit on the buggy side, the software that is. Over a year and a half later, after learning every possible thing about purchasing a computer in those years (the purchase of the 1000 wasn't a blind one, I just could have known more) ... I bought a Tandy 2000 on sale! Wow that sure was a reflection of all the intense research. But I was smart enough to also get an NEC Multisync, which was very new then. I can't remember when a friend gave me a breadbin C64, before the 2000 I think, which died shortly after I bought a 1541. Then almost simultaneously bought another C64(c) and an ITT XTRA XP, an xt essentially with a 286. That was maybe 8 or 9 months after I got the 2000.

The 2000 was sort of kind of well made. But mine had to be dismantled at one point and washed down with contact cleaner. Worked quite well for a little while. Then I redid all that and it was never the same. I will say if you take a computer apart dozens of times, especially one built the way the 2000 was, it could prove detrimental to it's long term heath. RS did use them for their store inventory system.
 
tipc said:
I was wanting to hear from justanotherhacker. I know how we eat over here.
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Tartar(e?) sauce for the fish. Salt and vinegar on chips, the vinegar usually pretty awful. Ketchup common. Mayo on thin American-style "fries" (not thick Brit-style "chips") is more of a burger-bar thing, it'd feel weird doing that in a "chippy".

"Up north" where folk are hardy and hearts have short Mean Time Before Overhaul, some places fry chips in lard. Elsewhere it's vegetable oil. Can't speak for the former, but in general quality is ridiculously variable from place to place - most are independent and for some reason quality doesn't correlate very closely with whether a shop sticks around or not (as far as I can tell).
 
Outside of fast food, our "fries" aren't much different than your "chips."

In fact, the "fries" that come with our Friday Night Fish Fry tend to be even larger yet.
 
Chuck(G) said:
My first and last UK experience with fish and chips was about 40 years ago when I dropped by a busy shop in King's Cross. Fried cod and chips, wrapped in newsprint.

Unbelievably greasy, with the chips being limp oily limitations of good pommes frites. I then figured that going "native" with food in the UK was a lost cause. I opted for Indian restaurants after that and have never been tempted to try again. The greasy taste is still in my memory.
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Hehe i remember the "Greasy spoon" type chip shops well, Cod and chips swimming in grease.
 
UK fish & chips with mushy peas is great, but I have come to prefer northeast ( preferably cape cod) fish & chips.

And on another note I was outside Milwaukee last November and I saw a ground round restraint! I hadn't seen one in about 18 years! I asked the girl at the counter and she said it was the last one. They still had popcorn machines but no silent films being projected to white screens.
 
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