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Our veteran chip shop owner is reinstating a retro classic at our multi-award winning chip shop to celebrate more than 45 years behind the range. They’re groovy baby!
As one of the UK’s longest serving fish and chip shop owners, Carol Fusco has been flying the flag for proper British fish and chips since the 1960s (with a family history in the industry dating back 65 years) and is marking Chip Week (16-22 February) – and raising money for charity – by bringing back the classic, crinkle-cut chips of her youth.
The ruffled chips with their crimped edges had to be cut with special, bespoke blades, and were the mainstay of Yorkshire’s chip shops in the sixties but began to fall out of favour when customers believed they were cooked from frozen.
“People became so used to seeing crinkle cut chips in plastic bags in the frozen food aisles that they assumed ours were too – but our crinkle cuts were prepared each day from freshly peeled potatoes, so they were always freshly cut and cooked to order,” says Chip Queen Carol. “I remember that people would ask for ‘six penneth o’ chips’ in those days (that’s about two-and-half pence now!) and we’d pop the hot crinkle chips into greaseproof bags and wrap them in old Whitby Gazettes!” says Carol. “We feel it is high time they made a comeback at Quayside.”
Starting in the industry as a Saturday girl at just 14-years of age, working for chip shop owners Violet and Dennis Fusco at Fusco’s of Whitby, Carol fell in love and eventually married their son Peter, buying the Royal Fisheries from them in 1979.
Building up the business together, she helped realise Peter’s dream of having his own chip shop on Whitby quayside in 1999, and, when he sadly passed away in 2006, she continued to offer first-class frying at the helm of the Fusco business, and as a single mum, ran three successful fish and chips shops and restaurants with the help of her four children. Under her leadership – rare in an industry dominated by men – Quayside has won a raft of national awards including, most recently, ‘Independent Takeaway Fish & Chip Shop of the Year 2014’.
“Fish and chips have given me an incredible career and a bright future for my children,” says Carol. “And part of the nation’s culinary heritage for more than 150 years, we’re proud to continue to put this uniquely British dish on the gourmet map. Whether crinkled or straight, our beef-dripping chips, cut from local potatoes, aren’t just a side order; they’re the main event!”
Between 11.30am and 12.30pm Monday to Friday during Chip Week, all proceeds from Quayside’s crinkle cut chip sales will go to the Fishermen’s Mission. The charity provides emergency support alongside practical, financial, spiritual and emotional care for active or retired fishermen and their families.
