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Amid a heavy few weeks, with war, fuel price hikes and inflation worries, the Herald’s Good Food team has delivered a cheap, cheerful and not-terribly-healthy distraction: a deep dive into one of Australia’s best-loved treats, the hot chip.
The team embraced their brief with gusto. Ever mindful of the palates of our readers, they taste tested fast-food chips and plain packet crisps; they researched the essential elements of a perfect home-cooked chip, interviewing the charmingly-named Spud Sisters for advice; and they investigated how chipflation is pushing up prices (at Merivale’s Mimi’s, shoestring chips with tarragon mayonnaise are listed for $20).
Today they released the piece de resistance, a laudable public service: Good Food’s guide to the best hot chips in Sydney, which involved the team crossing the city for days, tasting and ranking chips (and valiantly, for the sake of their own cardiovascular health, limiting themselves to a handful from each serve). As Good Food editor Sarah Norris pointed out, not all heroes wear capes.
Leading this crack team of chip tasters was Good Food’s national eating out and restaurant editor, Callan Boys, who spent a recent Friday visiting 10 different locations across Sydney, and eating fresh, hot chips at every single one of them. A food reviewer of Boys’ calibre and experience has years of practising appetitive restraint, but this assignment occasionally proved challenging, even for him.
“I’d think, ‘I’ll just have two or three chips – over the course of a day it’s not much’,” he said. “Except I really like chips. When you’re onto a good one, I’d eat way more than two or three.”
Boys first began thinking of a chip deep dive when he saw a similar project in the United States, which explored excellence in fried chicken. “We don’t have that relationship with fried chicken, but Australia is the hot chip capital of the world,” he says. “Everyone loves fried chips – all cultures, vegans, vegetarians. I’ve been going to British fish ’n’ chippers, Lebanese kebab stores, Greek gyros shops.”
For the takeaway review, the team relied on word of mouth (they’re all very plugged in) and online chip reviews of independent takeaway shops to narrow the candidates down to 40 finalists, and then divided them up for taste tests. They used the same criteria – overall taste, seasoning, texture (both inner and outer), temperature and appearance – to ensure a consistent marking standard.
“I’ve been to Avalon, I’ve been south to Sylvania, to Cronulla, I’ve been to Padstow, I’ve been to suburbs I’ve never set foot in before,” says Boys (who eats extremely healthy, slightly boring food for most of the week to balance out the restaurant reviews and keep his waistline in check). “A lot of these chips have that X factor. They’re chips with a bit of personality.”
The Good Food team has been exposed to a lot of chips over the past month. Have they had too much of a good thing? “I thought I’d be over chips by the end of this,” says Boys. But no. “After tasting so many, I’ve got more appreciation of what makes a great chip. I would happily eat any of these again.”
Boys worked on chip month with two deadlines in mind: one for publication, and the other for the impending birth of his baby. Ever the professional, he met both. The chip review was published today, and on Tuesday night, his wife Nina gave birth to baby Clara, their first child. A warm congratulations to them both.
For subscribers who are keen for a break from the bleak news about war, fuel prices and inflation, I also recommend a feature by Kayla Olaya and photographer Audrey Richardson on the venues cradling the next generation of bands; Alexandra Smith’s farewell column from state parliament, in which she looks back on some of the unexpected friendships she has witnessed; and Julie Power and Jack Gramenz’ story about a Bondi surfer who didn’t reach the swimming record he’d planned, but set another one in the process.
Have a good weekend.
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