Chips
Written for The Session #149: Food In Pubs
At 2:45pm on a Sunday, we’d just had lunch really, but there’s always room for chips. At The Farmer’s Arms in Lowick, Cumbria, the kitchen closes at 3pm, their delicious-smelling and amply-plated roast beef dinners served on a tight schedule in order to feed the locals and the visitors, while also enabling the community-run bar to close early. It’s expensive to pay staff, and The Farmer’s Arms gets around this with reduced opening hours rather than a reduction in the quality of the food or a cheapening of the general atmosphere. Grizedale Arts saved the pub from closure in 2024, and since its revival a more regular schedule of events and valuable creative workshops has been able to take place here—the pottery studio provides plates and pots for the pub, while also giving space to local potters and artists to work, or learn new skills.
We approach the bar with trepidation, knowing the kitchen is closing any minute. “Don’t suppose we could have some chips, please?” we asked with meek mouths.
“Oh, of course you can!” came the booming reply from the young, mulleted barman, his earring glinting in the light of a nearby disco ball. Immediately at ease, we doubled our order and went back to our pints of Bowness Bay Swan Blonde.
When they arrived, they were homemade perfection, already glittering with salt crystals and piled high, and served with a beautiful plastic tomato full of ketchup straight from my Nana’s 1970s fitted kitchen. There is nothing more beautiful than a chip.
When I worked at Wetherspoons many thousands of years ago, the one redeeming feature of the job other than the wage was access to a staff menu, off which we could also take a 50% staff discount. My favourite shift tea from this reduced selection of kitchen scraps was sausage and chips. It was not served with vegetables of any kind. A person can talk shit about Wetherspoons all day, and I will join in, but their chips have always been godly, the best of all the frozen chips. I am certain they are coated in semolina for extra crunch, leaving the centres fluffy and light. With mayonnaise, this dish, which cost me around £1.30 in 2008, was my favourite food. It didn’t make the pub I worked in any better, however. You can’t judge a pub by its chips—sometimes they are simply angels sent to soften the blow.
