Street Eats: Fish and Chips

If you want fresh, it makes sense to go straight to the source. So if you crave fish and chips, why not go to a fish shop? Wild Edibles, the premiere purveyor of fresh seafood in the city, also offers a full menu of ready-to-eat dishes at its Murray Hill location. There are plenty of fancy options from shrimp gazpacho to macadamia-crusted soft-shell crabs, but what really hits the spot is plain fried fish.

Here they use a real beer batter for an extra-light and crispy coating with plenty of nooks and crannies, and the cod comes in several giant fillets (at $10 it ought to be generous). On the side come lemon slices, a modern touch instead of malt vinegar, as well as a thick tartar sauce that tastes like it could be homemade, rich and flecked with paprika. The chips are assuredly not authentic pub style. Skinny, crunchy, and without a speck of peel, they are more reminiscent of McDonald’s—but in a good way.

Staunch anglophiles will have none of that. They’ll insist that real chips be thick and wide, like smashed thumbs—and a bit sodden, like the state when they’re best enjoyed. This is how you’ll find them at the city’s two English bastions of boiling oil: A Salt and Battery in the West Village and Chip Shop in Park Slope. These shops will throw just about anything in a vat of fat—from beets to Mars Bars. But in their frying zeal, they don’t always pay attention to the fish itself. So if that’s your focus, try Wild Edibles (which delivers to much of east Midtown). Here the fish couldn’t be fresher unless you caught it yourself.