The other day, someone stopped me in the street in the middle of Manchester and asked me where the best place to go and eat fish and chips was. I was dumbfounded – I wanted to explain that fish and chips is takeaway food. Or at least that’s how I’ve remember it from being little. Yes it’s on every pub menu, but that’s not the same as real fish and chips.

From my childhood memories, the ideal place to consume fish and chips is either: sat on a sea-view bench in a faded coastal resort town, with bright skies and a breeze as sharp as Sarson’s whipping through your hair, or, more likely, in a rain-lashed car with wind-down windows. The warm paper parcels should be ripped into with indecent haste, their contents shared among family members vying for the fattest chip or crunchiest piece of batter, all washed down with…